Obsession
by grey-eyed-goddess
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid did not expect to walk into work and find himself the center of a stalker's obsession, and he did not expect to find himself in her office with a microphone inviting her out for coffee...Reidcentric casefile-ish. COMPLETE
1. Prologue

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not used to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not used to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: This is the start of my first CM multichapter fic, but it doesn't involve the character from my one shots. It has a new character that I created. When this is done I'll start the other one. So, here it begins.

**Prologue **

Pressed into the fresh earth, his fingers were stilled by the cold lack of moisture beneath the soil and the slowly building pressure against his hands. He'd fallen with his palms turned upwards and outwards in some desperate attempt to stop the rain of dirt across his body, but the dirt had now scattered and found its way into every opening of his clothes. His dark blonde hair had taken on the color of the dusty earth as the ground around him had dried; his eyes had not reacted in time to save themselves for the whites were not brown with the lack of oxygen, but also with the small particles of earth that had slipped between the lids; and his mouth had closed and his lips had had remained the same light pink they had in life with only a soft covering of dulling dirt. No one who had known him in life would have ever remembered seeing his body so still had they been able to view his body now.

The six feet of space above him had been filled by filth and flora only moments before, and now the empty space was being filled by uniforms and useful things that the eyes of the dead man had seen sparingly in life because they were the useful things of the collectors of the dead. His mind would have no memory of these objects. Though they passed before his eyes his memory would fail him because his eyes would not see, his mind would not remember, and he would not attempt to do so.

In death he was reduced to a motionless and mindless cadaver that had become stiff with perpetual sleep. It was not a form that his companions of only days before would ever wish to see him, but it was them that pulled him from the earth. Gloved, their hands gripped the dead weight of their friend and reclaimed his body from the earth that had claimed it only seventy-two hours before now. Two hands gripped his torso beneath the arms and another set of hands gripped his legs as they struggled to free his long-limbed frame. His feet came free of the dirt, and they lowered his body atop a stretcher as another set of hands pulled the edges of sheet under him around his body.

Not a single pair of eyes dared to look at his face.

Only when the three people standing beside the stretcher stepped away did another set of hands grip the plastic bars and pull the body away from them. The three of them kept their eyes cast in separate directions: one pair never left the back of the coroner van as it drove away, another pair stayed fixed upon the upturned earth at their feet, and the final two eyes were turned upward towards the sky and the gathering clouds on the horizon.

"We need to set up some tents to preserve the crime scene." The lips beneath the first pair of eyes barely moved, but the two people near him began to move as he spoke. He turned his eyes from the van and back to the pile of dirt at his feet. Rolling up his sleeves, he spoke to no one particular, but to everyone around him. "Someone grab the CSIs so we can start. This case is now priority."

"Yes sir." A blue tent began to assemble itself over the crime scene.

The man issuing orders began walk towards the line of cars blocking the road, and his eyes closed as the red and blue spots of color found his face through the trees that had blocked him from the barrage of lights before. His fingers reached for the crime scene tape, pushed it aside, and struggled with the metal of the door handle as he realized that his vision was beginning to blur. The door opened, and he was thankful for the refuge of tinted windows and metal as he slammed the palm of his hand into the steering wheel twice before tilting his head back and gasping. The few tears that had threatened to fall vanished, and he glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Dark eyes met dark eyes, and he glanced at the odd angles of his dark hair and the lines crossing his face. He had been awake for far too long, and he was beginning to show his tiredness. That could not happen. He took a breath. They all needed him now.

When he stepped from the car his hair was parted, his breathing calm, and the tears no longer threatened to fall from his darkened eyes. He flipped open his phone.

"I need to be connected to the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI in Quantico."

-TBC-


	2. The 37th Day

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.

**Chapter One**

Special Supervisory Agent Aaron Hotchner rested a hand on the table before him, and the five agents in front of him looked up. Dr. Spencer Reid looked down, tapped his fingers against the table, and spoke as they all turned their eyes towards the fourteen pictures pinned to the wall in front of the table. The men in the pictures stared back in seven and were mangled by suffocation and death in the other seven. It took effort for the BAU to look at these pictures without turning their eyes away from the familiar faces.

It took effort for them to look Dr. Reid in the face without pulling him near them in some new attempt at protection.

Seven men, seven weeks of friendship and courtship, seven needle pricks, and seven graves marred the case folders of the Behavioral Analysis Unit-seven men with the face of Dr. Spencer Reid, seven weeks of friendship and courtship with the men who enjoyed solo nights, seven needle pricks in the crook of the right arm, and seven graves of men forced to watch as their death covered their six foot frame.

It had required three more multicolored trolls and a candid picture of Reid laughing for Garcia to even analyze the crime scene photos.

It had required three nights of conversation and teasing in the apartment of Spencer Reid for Morgan to even consider allowing his younger companion to stay alone.

It had required a night at the shooting range and a check of the security cameras for Hotchner to allow Reid to leave Quantico every night without the company of three large men with guns.

It had required several hugs, several well wishes, and several assurances of safety to quell JJ's fear and to coax her back to her office when the case had shown up.

It had required four words of comfort and several rounds of gentle offers of protection before Prentiss had allowed Reid to leave her sight.

Rossi wished Reid goodbye every night, hello every morning, and a nod during the day when he spoke, but besides that nothing was exchanged save for the simple knowledge that Rossi believed he would see the young awkward agent again the next day.

This had all ended on the thirty-seventh day of the investigation.

"Hey guys?"

"Hey baby girl, please tell me you found something." A soft giggle came over the speaker phone.

"So, I was thinking that no matter what we want to believe that all of these men look just as gorgeous as our sweet Dr. Reid, and so then couldn't he be the reason that some little woman got all hot and bothered and crazy and took it out on other guys that looked at him? I mean, you guys always say that women are the ones that drug first because they can't overpower, right? I went through and looked up our dear Dr. Reid, and found security tapes of all of his seminars and classes on profiling and linguistics. Then I used my sweet ass technical skills and that nifty little program I wrote myself to scan the faces in the videos, and I found a few common denominators, but then I got to the end of the tapes and low and behold-we had a winner."

The agents gathered around the table glanced at the blushing Dr. Reid with his face in his hands, and then they directed their gazes at the speaker phone to await its answer. Prentiss sighed.

"Garcia, what did you find?"

"You mean besides the fact that my beautiful Einstein has taught over one hundred hours of classes and seminars in which he was his adorably awkward self complete with breaking chalk and girls asking for phone numbers?"

"Garcia…"

"Right, sorry." They could hear shuffling and shifting as the technical analyst moved about papers until her voice bowled over the sound of paper. "I hit the jackpot of creepy stalker girls, and-surprise, surprise-she even works very close to home." Garcia hung up her cell phone and smiled as she walked into the conference room. "Three floors down close to home, sweet cheeks." She ruffled Reid's curling hair. "She's twenty-two and attended every single one of Reid's lectures."

Emily Prentiss pressed her finger tips against the edge of the folder in Garcia's hands before she looked around the table. The folder fell into her hands and the spine straightened out as Prentiss took out the papers inside it. Five pairs of eyes watched as her eyebrows rose. She took out one small identification photo. Her legs carried her towards the board, and she pressed a long pin through the top center of the photo. They all stared out the women before them: one woman smiling and standing beside the picture and the other captured in the moment with wide eyes behind brown frames and a barely upturned mouth in some semblance of a rarely used smile.

"Meet Dr. Vivian Jane Addy."

* * *

Paled by years away from the sun and smoothed by years away from the weathering forces outside, her skin bore no signs of damage over any of the pale white flesh but had taken on a sort of glow characteristic to marine life miles below land that had developed bioluminescence in the absence of light. Dark strands of hair twisted around her arms and neck cutting through the pallor of the skin with defining shadows of deep brown and black. Her narrow right fingers tapped against the wood of the desk as the left fingers gripped a grey cylindrical pen and pushed it down the page. The tip of the capped pen went down a line, paused, went down a line, paused and went down again before reaching the end of the page and vanishing towards the edge of the desk as the woman turned a page of the stapled papers. The process began again until she turned the last page, dropped the pen into a dark purple coffee mug, and pushed the brown framed glasses up from the tip of her nose. Hidden behind the glass and staring out into the darkness beyond her desk lamp, her eyes were various shades of grey and blue that deepened in color near the iris and became clear ice at the edges giving the illusion of smoke filled glass and flawed diamonds.

She focused her eyes on no particular spot before her, and they darted from left to right again as they had when she had read the words on paper only moments before now. She paused. Her fingers reached out in front of her body towards the pens, and this time she extracted a bright scarlet inked implement from the mug.

"Dr. Addy?"

The young woman was caught mid stretch with one thin arm before her, and she tilted her head to the right with her eyes cast upwards in the direction of the voice. She met his eyes.

"Dr. Addy, have you looked over the translations you received this morning?"

"They're on the right corner of the desk. I corrected a few things I found because I realized that Dr. Maris had taken some liberties in the literal translations by making assumptions about the meaning of the text as a whole. I corrected the words and place the multiple possible meanings in footnotes at the bottom in red." Addy forced her eyes away when she saw the man before her shift onto his left foot and step back.

"Have the rest done by tonight." She kept her eyes on her pen when she heard his clipped sentences and shortened words.

"I've completed them all."At his sigh she raised her eyes to his again.

'_One one-thousand, two two-thousand, three three-thousand…'_

She lowered her eyes.

"Dr. Ligon and Dr. Maris have files they would like for you to proof before they send them off. You can go get them yourself. I'm going home." The man pulled the files off of the right corner and turned his back on Dr. Addy. She nodded to his retreating body.

"Yes sir." She pushed her small frame out of her chair, and managed an odd twist when she felt the familiar pressure in her shoulder from a dislocation years before. Even at five feet and one inch she dwarfed the desk when she stood. Pushing the chair in, she took one step and turned. Placing the red pen back in the mug she turned back towards the door and began to walk away from the desk for a second time. In three steps she twisted a door knob, pushed a thin bit of wood and was gone from her closet office at the far end of the left wing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation building in Quantico, Virginia.

* * *

"Doctor Vivian Jane Addy, twenty-two, and she lives alone." Rossi pinned the files on the doctor to the board with a shove and a twist of the pin. "She graduated from high school at age fourteen and since then she's received two PhD's in linguistics and one in classical languages. She entered the FBI at first as an intern translator before entering training at the urging of her mentor-Dr. James Brown-who worked as a translator and researcher. Last year Dr. Brown passed away, and his death roughly correlates to the time when the stalking of the first victim would've begun." Hotchner nodded.

"She's physically small which would explain the drugging of the men." He turned his eyes to the large man to his right, and tilted his head. "Morgan, your expertise."

"She obsessed with Reid as far as I can tell. She probably feels some sort of connection because you both possess the same strand of intellect, and she's even gone as far to study the same fields as you-that may or may not be a coincidence. She probably feels as though she could never achieve any sort of relationship with you so she finds these men who physically resemble you and have some above average intelligence in the state, but after a certain number of weeks their differences from you begin to become more apparent-remember, she's studied you and they would become very apparent-and she snaps. They cannot be you and she sees no way out with her anger when they cannot give her what she wants. She's a perfectionist from the crime scenes, but sadistic. They're awake when they're buried alive, but she derives no pleasure from the task. Because of her small size the drugging and burial is probably just the easiest way for her to dispose of the bodies. She's grown comfortable in this cycle though because it probably gives her companionship that she wants so she's not going to change her ways until she gains the confidence to confront Reid." Morgan glanced at his colleague. "That's you, my man, but don't worry about her. She won't come near you when I'm around."

Reid rolled his lips together and gave a half hearted smiled. "Thanks, Morgan." Prentiss winced.

"Guys, she's not going to stop until she gets Reid." The room silenced, and they all directed their eyes towards the lithe figure trying to minimize his frame. "It might take weeks to get her to say something so we need to hit her hard with whatever we get." The dark haired agent looked at all of her colleagues one by one before continuing. "She's not confident, she's seeking companionship, and I think if we give that to her she'll let her guard down. If necessary, I think making her feel as though confessing is her only way out might be what we have to do. She's killed seven men while trying to work up the courage to approach Reid so she may even tell Reid what she's done in an attempt to win him over."

JJ frowned as she walked into the room upon hearing the end of Prentiss's words. "Guys, it's a woman with an obsession with a criminal profiler. She probably feels that the only way to get Reid to talk to her is for her to be a criminal in need of a profile. She could have started this just to get his attention. No offense, Reid, but you spend your Friday nights in a prison interviewing psychos." Morgan smirked, but Reid raised his eyes to hers. She raised her hands. "But I'm not a profiler. What do you want to tell the press?"

"Nothing. This woman is intelligent, and she might realize where the profile is leading. A fake profile may tip her off so let's just stay away from the media for now." JJ nodded in response, and Garcia held up one hand.

"Who's ready for movie night? I've got the videos of the seminars ready to go." Reid stood up in one fluid movement, and his hands found the pockets of his cords.

"Okay. I need to watch these." The room slowly emptied as Garcia pulled her genius from the room with one hand hooked on his arm, and the exit of Morgan with Prentiss to follow the two before them.

"Morgan." Prentiss turned with Morgan, and she watched Hotchner raise his eyes to the other agent. "You are to be within five minutes of Reid when we begin this." Morgan nodded. "Prentiss, stay with Morgan. If this turns out badly, and we're correct Dr. Addy may feel as though she has no way out." Prentiss glanced at Morgan. "She may think of a female presence as less threatening. Now, all of you need to watch the videos of her. I want to know everything about her by tonight."

Rossi stared at his companion at the round table, and the two of them shared a glance.

"You think this is a good idea, Aaron?"

"She fits our profile perfectly, and Reid won't even have to go undercover except to make her believe that he likes her company." Aaron leaned back. "Hell, he might. I don't think any of us have ever talked to him about linguistics before, and it'll probably be a nice change for him."

"He's not used to this kind of attention."

"None of us wanted to admit that he might be the reason behind this, but we all knew it. There's no coincidence in this." He sighed. "I think it'll work. It would probably work if we just told her that if she confessed she could have Reid, but that's really not an option."

Rossi's laughter reached Hotchner's ears, and the younger profiler looked up.

"Dave?"

"I didn't mean the plan. I think the plan will work fine." He pressed his palms against the table and forced his body upwards. "I meant Reid. Do you think it's a good idea that we're going to send Reid in to gain a young girl's trust and then to betray it?"

"She's killed seven men. He'll understand that." Dave pulled his hands up in a mockery of defeat.

"I'm just saying…I'm going to watch these videos to see what I can learn about her." Hotchner nodded once, but Rossi recognized the face of a man far away at heart.

'_He'll understand…That's what Gideon kept saying in Georgia.'_

-TBC-

Please review and tell me what you think. I'm trying to update every three days which is something I've never done before because I feel bad about leaving my other fics to die. Thank you for reading and reviewing.


	3. The Hours before the Dawn

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.

**Chapter Two**

"That is an exceptionally small woman." Penelope Garcia leaned away from the screen and turned her body towards her computers as the rest of the BAU team leaned closer to the one screen replaying Reid's days of teaching. While Reid's friends had difficulty in drawing their eyes away from the image of a fumbling Reid on the screen, Reid himself had no problem in keeping his eyes on the image of the brunette in the fifth row of the room. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and her flat shoes reminded him of something he'd seen on the feet of Velma when he'd watched cartoons on Saturday mornings, but they lacked the characteristic orange hue.

"Reid, that is not English on the chalk board." Spencer Reid forced his eyes from the female form before him, and he winced as his mirror image ran a piece of blue chalk across the black board. His hands moved down to his sides as he used another piece of colored chalk to draw arrows to a word across the board.

"It's an old Latin poem. I was talking about the use of symbolism in different pieces of literature, and how certain things-symbolically speaking-have remained the same as the years passed. After this I go into more modern pieces and then journals from different cases." He was met with three uneven sets of eyes. "Shouldn't you be watching Dr. Addy?" Morgan smirked.

"Yeah, sure man." The room returned to the silence it had before, and it was only interrupted by the steady typing of Garcia. All eyes were on the slight woman on the screen as her eyes followed Dr. Reid's hands writing on the board. On the desk before her she slid one black inked pen across a notebook, and it was Prentiss who leaned forward intent on seeing some small clue the others had missed.

"She's writing with a capped pen." Morgan glanced up.

"Isn't she supposed to be a genius?" Reid shook his head at all of them while they watched the capped pen slide across the paper. The image of Reid before them stopped writing, and suddenly the cap came off in one swift movement.

"She's only taking notes on what I say. She's got an eidetic memory."

"Then why take notes?"

"It's only what we see, Morgan. I've told you that." Their eyes followed the pen in the woman's hand. "She's never approached me, never asked a question, and yet she's created this delusion. I don't even know if I've ever smiled at her so what set this off?"

"It's probably the shared intellectual interest." Rossi relaxed back into his chair. "How many young prodigies chose linguistics and the FBI as a career choice? I doubt she has ever had someone to talk to at all. She's been cut off from people her own age because of her intellect and those that have her intellect because of her age. She's going to be quite awkward." Rossi caught the eye of the young, long haired agent and grinned. "Much more awkward than you, Reid. You've got social experience from your time at school however badly that went. Her files place her at a boarding school since the age of seven. That could be her fascination with the number." He frowned. "Garcia, are you sure there's nothing else in her files? She never did anything besides school according to these before her internship with the FBI."

The steady tapping of keys and the jingle of some silver charm bracelet that was overloaded with trinkets was the only answer. "Sir, I've looked, but this girl is like the 'Ghost of Vague Record's Past' if I ever saw one, but fear not commander Rossi, because if she's ever done anything I'll find it before we need it." The company within the the room exchanged uneasy smiles.

Then they turned back towards the glowing monitor and began to watch again.

"How many of these are there?"

"About one hundred hours worth." Of those with their eyes on the moving figures before them, it was Reid that groaned. Prentiss hit his shoulder.

"We're doing this for you genius."

"Yeah, one hundred hours of stuff for you guys to tease me with."

* * *

The next three hours passed slowly as her eyes scanned over the small print of the paper before her, and her fingers tapped at the underside of her desk in a steady rhythm. The palm of her hand hit the bottom of the desk on alternating taps and then flipped down. She paused. Pulling at the hem of her skirt, she twisted to the side to peer at the outside of her left thigh, and she pressed her hand onto the bruise visible through the sheer hose surrounding her legs.

The bruise was a splattered mixture of blue and green with yellowing edges, and Vivian Addy eyed the corner of her desk to her right. She pulled the black skirt down her leg and back to the top of her knee before turning back towards the papers atop her desk, and she began to tap again at the bottom of the wood. The words before her ran through her mind as her eyes scanned page after page. The rough edges of the Russian letters shifted and distorted into the smooth, more familiar forms she knew from her childhood until she found herself staring at one word that did 

not shift and did not distort as the others had. Capitalized, it was slightly larger in size than the other words, but her mind passed over that aspect from it as the neurons fired trying to place this word in a dictionary or thesaurus that she had read, be it days ago or years ago.

It was this that word that landed Dr. Addy in the much larger and better placed office of Ligon and Maris five minutes later with her notes in hand and the word highlighted in green. She stood in the doorway without moving after she knocked, and she only stepped forward towards the desk when she saw the beckoning fingers of Dr. Maris. She paused before the desk with her left foot turned in towards her right and her back impossibly straight.

"What is it Addy?" She noticed the lack of credentials and title, but not the drawn out syllables of her name. "I expected these translations before I left tonight which means that you only have half of an hour to do that."

"I will have it done within the time frame of the twenty-five minutes that remains. I am simply having a problem with one word I've read that I do not believe is in fact a real word. I don't believe it exist in the Russian language or any dialect of Russian that I have studied. I considered the fact that it might be a name or place, but it doesn't follow common name patterns and it's not on any map published if it is indeed a location." Addy didn't hear the exasperated sigh of her superior and held out the document. "It's the word highlight-"

"-In green, I know, Dr. Addy." Maris's eyes glanced over the word once before she sat down her pen and sighed. "Dr. Addy, you are considered a prodigy?" Addy did not respond, but she met Maris's eyes.

'_One one-thousand, two two-thousand, three three-thousand…'_

"Dr. Addy, I asked you a question."

"I was not aware Dr. Maris. I'm sorry. Yes, I've heard myself being called that."

"Then I congratulate you on realizing that this is not a real world, but it can be translated through observing the bits of other words it is made out of. So, it very much a word."

"I don't understand."

"They used different bits of other words to create a new word so that the writers could express what they wanted."

"But after observing the context of the letters there were other words and phrases that were available and could've been used-127 words and 82 phrases."

"They wanted to express the views of their political party."

"Then why did they not just use the words 'political party'?"

"Does it matter?"

"I don't understand."

There was another sigh. "Dr. Addy, have you translated and proofed the other messages and files you were given."

"Yes, Dr. Maris. I completed them before coming. I've placed them in the file folder you are holding. They are underneath the file I had a question pertaining to, and I've corrected a few things I've found in red ink. Is there anything else you need me to do, Dr. Maris?"

"Dr. Ligon is leaving once she is done, and I'll be leaving in about half an hour."She twisted her wrist up so that her eyes could read the hands of her watch. "We need you to draft a letter in Spanish. The English outline is on the corner of my desk. Please have it done sometime tomorrow."

"Yes, Dr. Maris."

* * *

"Where's Reid?"

Prentiss answered with her coffee cup in front of her lips. "He's watching some more footage we've got of her. He wants to be prepared or something." Morgan grinned.

"That's our little boy scout." He kept talking when he realized Hotchner's eyes were on him. "He's doing a good job, too. I think he's going to show up in about ten minutes when the next video ends with some notes."

"It must feel weird to just watch yourself for hours when you're not Morgan."

"Watch yourself, Prentiss; your desk is just right there."

Rossi took over for the younger agents, and caught Hotchner's eye. "Dr. Reid just wants to make sure he knows everything he can off of those tapes before we discuss going through with the plan. You know how he likes to know everything."

* * *

Pressed into the crook of his arm, his fingers were stilled by the cold lack of warmth beneath his skin and the slowly building pressure against his hands. He'd fallen into the chair with his eyes wide, but unfocused in some desperate attempt to stop the rain of the whispering he could see when he turned his back on the class, but the whispers had now scattered and found their way into every opening of his being. His dark blonde hair had been pushed behind his ears and out of his face one too many times; his eyes had not reacted in time to save themselves and now they focused and unfocused after being subjected to hours of staring at one unchanging screen; and 

his mouth had closed and his lips had remained closed with no intent of opening again. No one who knew him would have ever remembered seeing his body so still had they been able to view his body now.

The six feet of space before him had been filled by chalk and characters only moments before, and now the empty space was being filled by students and exit signs that the eyes of the Reid had seen sparingly in life because they were the useful things of those waiting to leave class. His mind would have no memory of these objects. Though they passed before his eyes his memory would fail him because his eyes would be focused elsewhere, his mind would be occupied with other things, and he would not stare at the sign with the same reverence as those waiting. Not a single pair of eyes dared to look at his face as they rushed from the room of different languages and linguistics.

It was painful for Spencer Reid to watch the tapes when they revealed his mishaps, and the whispering and teasing behind his back. That was the second reason he kept his eyes on Vivian Addy. She sat perfectly still with the sliding of the pen across the paper as her only movement, but he caught the sight of her fingers twitching against the side of the desk. Pushing his hand out towards the computer, Reid stopped the video.

The agents of the BAU weren't surprised when Reid walked to the round table without disrupting the conversation, and they let him sit there staring at the board on the wall before quieting with an expectation of his contribution to the discussion.

"Reid, are you sure that you want to do this?"

"Yeah, of course. If it'll catch her before she kills again I'll do it." Hotchner nodded.

"We'll set up the wires tomorrow morning when you get here. Go get some sleep-everyone."

**-TBC-**


	4. Hobbies

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.

Author's Note: I just read the Criminal Minds second novel. Barnes & Noble didn't have the first so I read Criminal Minds: Killer Profile. It. Was. Awesome. I also found out that Reid's majors are Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics (are the novels cannon?). So, I'm going to find the other novel tomorrow. It took me 45 minutes to read, but it was still amazing.

**Chapter Three**

She left the notes covered in various Spanish nouns and verbs in the box on the door of Dr. Maris's office before she left at some ungodly hour of the night. She took the subway home and caught the eyes of a jerking and twisting man with dark eyes and dark intentions. Three stops before hers he stumbled out of the train car with the same amount of cash he'd possessed only moments before while she read files from the office with the FBI seal emblazoned on the front. Dr. Addy did not glance up as he left, and she remained quite oblivious to the world around her until she began to walk out of the car and up the stairs to the street.

It was when she stepped forward to cross the street that she glanced up, and she stepped backwards as a car sped past her toes. Catching her feet on the curb, she caught herself on her hands as she fell backward onto the water and grime sprayed concrete.

The next morning she stepped onto the same curb with one brown heel on the street and one pressed into the degrading concrete crack, and another car drove past her heels with barely an inch of comfort. She only noticed when the car pushed a gust of wind against her folders and the words waved in and out for a minute. She had to force her eyes away from the files as she entered the crowded stairs, and her hands missed the bag slung across her shoulders as she tried to push the folder into her bag. The force of the crowd kept her moving towards the cars. Pressing one hand against the side of the car she let herself be pushed into a corner, and her eyes found the only spot before her that was not solid black or brown with jackets and shirts.

The purple patterns in the scarf kept her distracted until she noticed the twisted strand of hair twirled around another that rested at the center of the scarf. The dark blond hair curled at the bottom, and this knotted piece of hair was directly in her line of sight when she looked up at the scarf. The minutes passed as the tips of her left hand began to tap against the side of her leg. The man before her shook his head and pushed some strand of hair she couldn't see behind his ear, but the twisted and tangled hairs she could see remained the same. It was five minutes later when she began to slide the nail of her pinky across her thumb in an attempt to distract herself, that she closed her eyes. A moment later the tips of her left fingers were an inch from the tangled hair when the car jerked to a stop, and Addy was forced by the momentum into the back of the man in front of her. His body lurched forward with hers and was pushed through the crowd onto the platform without turning around.

Addy found herself on the platform, and she turned just in time to catch a flash of purple on the stairs above her as she took her first step up the staircase.

* * *

"Reid, under no circumstances are you to take this off." Morgan watched the other agent nod. "Naw, see, last time I said this, the first thing you did was take the jacket off, and that better not happen again."

"Morgan, it was a bullet proof vest and the crazy man with a gun made me take it off. I wasn't going to argue." Spencer Reid watched them tap on the receiver of the microphone that was pulled and secured through a hole in his pocket. "Anyways, I don't really want to be alone with a girl that kills men who look like me so I'll think I'll leave the microphone in place."

"Reid, are you sure you want to do this?"

"If this is the way to catch someone who has murdered seven men by burying them alive while they were incapacitated by ketamine, then yes, I want to do this."

"You know the plan?"

"I know the plan."

"Are you sure?"

Reid smiled at all of them. "Hey, genius, remember?" Morgan slapped the right side of Reid's back, and Prentiss laughed. Hotch watched on unsmiling.

"Reid, focus, you're going to go down there, you're going to request a translator who knows Greek, and you're going to have a chat with Dr. Addy about linguistics. I don't care how you do it, but I want you to chat this girl up-flirt with her, just keep her talking and maybe invite her to dinner."

The room was silent as they all stared at Hotch. Reid fiddled with the purple frays of his scarf.

"Never mind, just request a translator and we'll coach you through it via the earpiece."

Reid nodded along as he fiddled with the microphone in his pocket with one hand and the tips of his hair with the others.

"Reid, you ready?"

"Yeah, yeah, I am definitely ready." He had nodded and rolled his lips together as he spoke, and Prentiss turned her face into her hand. She beckoned him over with her other.

"Let's make you presentable." Reid's eyes darted to his colleagues in turn. Two steps towards Prentiss brought him close enough for her to reach around him and pull roughly at a strand of hair behind his head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Your hair was tangled. In every video we watched Addy was well dressed and well groomed…and it was distracting."

Reid fingered the hair at the back of his neck. "Okay." His eyes glanced down at the file folder as it appeared in his hand. One finger tipped open the folder just enough to see the evidence back and thin sheet paper in the bag. He looked up and met the eyes of the senior agent before him. Hotchner gripped the young man's shoulder.

"Reid, you ready?"

"Yeah, you guys are actually acting like I'll come back this time. Let's do it."

* * *

She was aware of the knock on the door only because of its unannounced appearance in her life, and she stared at the door for a few seconds with her head tilted to the right. She laid her pen against the paper in front of her.

Another knock.

The side of her thigh hit the corner of her desk as she walked to the door, and she twisted the knob with her left hand leaving herself the only thing visible through the crack in the door as it opened. Spencer Reid ducked his head slightly to see the woman before him and realized that he had underestimated the numbers in her file next to the word 'height'. Her eyes were about even with the middle of his chest, and he watched her look up.

"Dr. Addy?" She reached his face, and he watched the ways her eyes widened. She took a step back, opening the door on her way. "I'm Dr. Spencer Reid from the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and I was given your name by Dr. Ligon." He held out his hand, and she looked at it once before reaching out and gripping it in return. "One of our agents received a letter, and they have no idea who it's from. We're hoping you could help us?" She cocked her head to the side and waited for him to continue as her mind missed the inflection in his voice.

"_Step one accomplished. Way to go man."_

Spencer greatly hoped that it would not be Morgan in his ear for long. He watched the woman before him stare expectantly, and he ducked his head away from her eyes with the folder held out in front of him. "It's in Greek." Her fingers closed around the edge of the folder, and he waited for her to pull the evidence bag out and stare at the letter inside it.

"You'd like me to translate it into English." Reid nodded, and she turned her back on him. Using a slip of paper from her notebook, she pressed the tip of her pen against the paper and began to write. His eyes followed the arch of her shoulders and spine, and his mind began to try and come with some answer as to how she found enough strength to corral men more than a foot taller than herself. Following the indention of her back through her white blouse, he pressed his lips together and his eye brows came together as he starred at her waist. Spencer Reid was quite sure that, if he ever found himself in a situation that called for such intimacy, his hands could complete circle her waist with his fingers touching and the tips overlapping.

"_Why don't I hear talking? Chat her up, Romeo!"_

She turned as he opened his mouth, and their eyes locked. She gave no indication that she had noticed his intention to speak.

"I've translated the letter as literally as possible from the original Greek into English, and I must ask if that's all you need." She watched him nod with her eyes never leaving his. "This letter was written by someone whose first language is English-not Greek-and I think they probably learned it during high school or college because of the grammatical structure being so rigid. It's hardly friendly despite the word selection because it uses very formal structure, and the writer is right handed." She pulled her eyes away when she saw him avoiding her own eyes. "Is that helpful?" She met his eyes again.

…_One one-thousand, two two-thousand, three three-thousand..._

She forced her eyes towards the paper.

"Yes, that's-ah-very helpful." He took her translation in hand, and tried to focus on the miniscule longhand scrawled across the paper. "How did you know?"

"During translating the letter I realized that the Greek being used was too formal for the actual content of the letter and word choice. There's no slang, and the Greek used resembles the Greek studied by students rather than spoken today even were the writer older. The writer was nervous, but careful. I can see where they took their time and formed each letter very slowly, but their hand shook-some of the lines are uneven for such care to be put into it.'

Reid forced his eyes to widen in surprise. "You've studied Linguistics?" She met his eyes as she spoke.

"I have two PhD's in Linguistics." Her eyes went to the folder still in his hands.

"_Aren't you two just two peas in a pod. It's so cute and deadly. Now, let's try to conquer step two here…"_

Reid caught himself starring at her while Morgan chattered in his ear. She kept eye contact until she saw him wince at the voice she couldn't hear, and he watched her grey eyes dart away to stare at the wall. Spencer Reid was quite aware of the rising tension in the room. Addy met his eyes again as he smiled at her.

"Thanks! Could I get the letter back?"

_One one-thousand, two two-thousand, three three-thousand..._

She looked away, nodded, and turned. The letter was in his hands and in the folder when Reid looked away from her face and down at his hands. He swallowed.

"You enjoy linguistics?" When her eyes widened behind her glasses at him in some sort of wild disbelief that he was speaking to her, Spencer Reid smiled and nodded his head down. "It used to be my hobby in college, and now I use it more than what I went to college for in the first place." She nodded.

"I read a book on linguistics when I was eleven, and after that I attempted to read every book on the subject." Reid caught the way she glanced away from him. "I'm glad that you found linguistics as a hobby. I based some of my own research after your studies and essays." He was quite sure that she wasn't aware of the light blush creeping up her cheeks. "I find your studies on the tendency of those accused or suspected of violent crimes to use the iussive subjunctive over the more commonly used optative subjunctive fascinating. I attended one of your seminars on linguistics, and I considered asking you about your research, but-"

She stopped midsentence, and looked away.

"I'm sorry. Sometimes I get carried away. I've been trying to stop that." She looked everywhere but his eyes. "Is there anything else you needed?"

"_Well, that wasn't weird or informative at all. I didn't understand a word of it."_

Reid licked his lips and ducked his face to the left to take a breath. He stared at her while she kept her eyes focused on the floor. Reid tried not to think about what he'd been about to say before Morgan had interrupted his thoughts with his disembodied voice. He watched one strand of dark hair fall from the clip that she had used to pull half of her hair back with earlier that day.

"Dr. Addy?" She met his eyes. "You went to my seminar on linguistics?" She only nodded after he raised his eyebrows in expectation of an answer. He pressed his lips together again out of nervousness. "You understood them?" Her eyes darted to the left and right before she nodded again, and Spencer Reid found himself smiling at the look of disbelief on her face without having to make himself do it. "Ah, if you'd like we could meet and talk about them. You said you had some questions so, if you'd like, I could meet you for coffee or something to talk…About them…Your questions that is."

"_Real smooth, Romeo."_

She blinked twice and opened her mouth to answer before closing it and swallowing. Her head twisted to the left and tilted to the right slightly as she looked at him, and she nodded.

"I would appreciate that. Thank you, Dr. Reid."

"When I leave I can come get you, or we could meet somewhere…"

"_The coffee shop inside the bookstore down the street."_

"…The coffee shop in the book store down the street maybe?"

She nodded four times in quick succession, and Reid recognized that movement-he'd nodded like that in his videos of the seminars. He winced inwardly.

"That would be fine. I will wait for you." She nodded again. "Here."

"Great!"

"Yes."

Neither spoke until he shifted the folder in his hands nearly dropping the letter, and he held out one hand.

"Thank you and I'll see you tonight." She took his hand.

"You're welcome." One side of her mouth tilted upwards in a half smile. "Yes, tonight."

While walking down the hall after closing the door Spencer Reid was vaguely aware of the sound of her body hitting the door behind him. He forced the smile off his face.

"_Good going. We'll set up at the coffee place as soon as we brief when you get up here. Also, Garcia found out why her file is so sparse."_

"Why?"

"_Her name isn't Vivian Jane Addy. Someone had her name changed when she was ten and she really hasn't done anything besides school and this job." _

"That's strange."

"_Why?"_

"Her parents would be the ones to change the name."

"_Why would the parents want to make it look like their daughter isn't theirs?"_

"Maybe because they knew what she was."

-TBC-


	5. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, 75 BC

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: This is really just a shorter filler chapter.

**Chapter Four**

"What's her real name?"

"No idea." They all watched Garcia shrug over the monitor. "Someone took a lot of time and money to cover up her real name-probably a few years ago. I can trace where they went back to have her name changed on reports and certificates from school, but they're good at hiding what they erased. It'll take some time."

"Just get it to us Baby Girl."All eyes turned away as her face vanished from the screen, and Reid shifted in his chair.

"Morgan, you've checked the coffee shop?"

"It's got running security cameras and places for us to sit by and watch boy wonder, and there's only one exit for her to take if it turns to that."

"Reid, your objective is to just get her talking. Maybe find out where she was when the abductions and murders occurred, and try to be subtle about it." Hotchner's eyes turned to Reid. "Anything about her you've noticed?"

Dr. Reid could not find his voice at first, and he rolled his lips together while sitting up in his chair to think. "She's painfully shy, and I think, well, she's just intelligent and awkward. Her analysis of the letter was brilliant." He glanced at Hotchner. "Her linguistic skills would greatly benefit the BAU were she not suspected of murder."

"We'll deal with that when we arrest her. Reid, tonight you are to focus on getting her to trust you. If she tries anything we'll be right around the corner listening into the conversation. All right?"

"I've got it. Just like today but in a coffee shop."

"Good. Anything else we should know about her before we all go to look at the shop?"

Spencer Reid drew up the memory of her meeting his eyes and glancing away, and he counted out the seconds slowly in his head. "No. She's just intelligent, but we know that."

"All right, then let's get lunch and wait for tonight." Hotchner tapped one fist against the table twice. "And by get lunch, I mean be back in half an hour so we can go over victimology and the profile more." The profilers in the room laughed as they left, and for those few minutes the tensions and facts of the case were gone.

* * *

Vivian Addy missed lunch out of her nervousness, and her handwriting grew shakier as the hours passed by her. Her mind was not focused on the words before her, but on the conversation only three hours ago that had left her in a state of wonderful confusion. Fingers tapping at the bottom of the desk, she was restless and her body showed it-her teeth had left bite marks on her bottom lip from the repeated gnawing of an hour, strands of her dark hair were beginning to slide to the sides of her face from the clip at the back of her head, and her normally straight nails were beginning to show signs of tear as they hit the desk time after time. She was not used talking to men. She was not used to talking about linguistics to someone that understood what she was saying. She was not used to being asked out for coffee by one of the leading agents of the BAU who she had based almost all of her research off of over the past years, and she was definitely not used to this newly found nervousness.

It was twenty minutes later that she glanced down at her translation and realized that her normally tame handwriting had taken a few jagged turns and twists for the worst.

She gave up around five and let herself pull up file after file on her computer with mixed labels of 'Reid', 'linguistics', 'dissertation' and one internet search of 'how to understand body language'. Her eyes darted from left or right across the screen for an hour as she tried to calm her nerves. It was when she couldn't remember what she's just read for the first time in her life that Vivian Addy had to force herself to leave her desk and closet-turned-office to find some bottle of water down the hall. The cool water tasted slightly of plastic, but soothed the throat that was not used to such amounts of talking. Her feet carried her back to her desk twelve minutes later as she flicked her watch on her wrist every few minutes to check the time, and the lid of the bottle was to her lips when she heard him behind her in the doorway.

"Are you ready to go?" She gagged when his voice reached her ears, and he watched her body arch forward as she coughed. She turned with her eyes down and her hands at her side with her water bottle clutched between two fingers. She blinked twice as he smiled.

"Yes, I am."She leaned backwards across the desk to grab her bag with her left hand, and Reid noticed the odd look on her face as she straightened with it across one shoulder. He knew that look-that look had been on his face when he'd failed to knock over his coffee during lunch. The room had lightened with laughter as the break in profiling took hold, but the heavy atmosphere had returned as Reid had glanced at his watch.

"Great."He stepped aside to let her out the door, and she managed some odd side step that dragged her arm across the door frame. He cocked his head to one side as she ignored the slightly grazed skin of her forearm.

"Yes, great."

It was when they were in their separate corner of the elevator that he gestured at her arm.

"You're bleeding." Her eyes darted to her arm, and she eyed the red scratches running across her skin.

"Oh." She gave him a half smile. "I've always been quite uncoordinated, and I suppose I've just gotten used to such small pain. I didn't even notice." She pressed her fingers against the swelling flesh as he eyed her arm. She met his eyes.

"Me too. I always knock over at least one thing at dinner."

'…_One one-thousand, two two-thousand, three three-thousand…'_

Her eyes darted away as she answered him. "Hopefully neither of us will prove to be disastrously uncoordinated tonight." His mind picked up the humor in the words, but his ears did not pick up the inflection and intonation that should have accompanied the words. He felt himself chuckle at the thought of coffee sweeping across the table anyways.

"I hope I don't embarrass myself in front of the only person who has ever taken my seminars seriously."

"I found them highly informative. I was not aware that anyone had mistaken them for simply something to waste the time, and I certainly never noticed anyone else treating it as such." A brief image of multiple FBI hopefuls slouched in their seats as they listened to him explain why the pressure of the writing on the paper was important scrolled through Reid's mind. "Of course, I must admit to note taking and the fact that I tend to become absorbed into whatever I'm focusing on at the moment."

Reid didn't speak the first words on his mind. _'I bet you have a hard time focusing with outside noise and distractions.'_ Instead, he heard himself utter, "I do that too. Even if it just takes me five minutes to read a book, my friends hate it because I won't even notice if they're talking to me." He watched as the elevator doors opened to the first floor. As they stepped off the elevator he caught the faint scent of peppermint as Addy passed before him. Reid's nervousness took hold of him. "Did you know that there are six elevator deaths per year?"

She met his eyes. "Vitruvius reported that Archimedes built his first elevator in 236 B.C." Her eyes followed the lights of the cars as they drove past, and Reid grimaced at the wince on her face as a car's horn added to the noise of the evening.

Spencer Reid kept his eyes away from the members of the BAU as they entered the coffee shop, but he joined in on the tennis match of elevator trivia.

"Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, 75 B.C. He wrote the De Architectura." His voice barely carried over the sound of the traffic.

"A book of ten sections divided into civil engineering, building materials, temples, civil buildings, domestic buildings, pavements, aqueducts, the influence of science on architecture, and the construction of machines."

"That's only nine."

"Book four was a continuation of book three's subject of temples and orders of architecture."

It was Garcia lurking behind a laptop and a large, whipped cream concoction at a table who smirked, and it was Reid who caught her laughing reflection. Spencer Reid ushered Vivian Addy to a secluded set of chairs away from the noise in front of the counter and the windows that would give her lines of sight to every agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.

**-TBC-**

As always, please review (you've already gotten this far).


	6. Three Seconds

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: The story is finally going somewhere. It took longer than I thought it would to build up to this.

**Chapter Five**

"They have you translating memos and letters?" Reid's fingers stayed perched on the top of the coffee lid after he let it balance on his knee.

"I translate letters and memos for the office and other agencies we're in contact with, and I also proof translations done by other agents." Her body was on the edge of the straight back chair with her shoulders pulled back and the spine perpendicular to the seat of the chair. She toyed with her cup as Reid reached for another bag of sugar.

"But they've never made much use of your skills in linguistics." He glanced at Addy in disgust as she took a drink of her dark black coffee. "How do you drink that?"

Her eyes widened over the rim of her cup. "I suppose it's exactly how everyone else does it."

He grinned and ducked down. "I meant black. I can't stand straight black coffee."

"I've never really enjoyed sugar. When I was a child I wasn't allowed to eat much of it and I think I just passed the age where I would learn to enjoy its taste. My mother was very strict about my diet." She felt Reid's eyes on her.

"_This girl does realize that she's almost so thin that she could slide out that open window, right?"_

"_It's a girl thing, Morgan."_

Reid blocked out the chatter running through his ears. "She was strict."

"She just didn't want me to embarrass the family. My sister was well known in our neighborhood." She twisted the lid atop her cup of coffee and sighed. "Do you have any hobbies outside of work, Dr. Reid?" She glanced at the slight blush on his cheeks. "Pertaining to linguistics and such, of course, I didn't mean to imply…"

"I collect old books." Her eyes widened.

"What kind?"

"Any kind. I enjoy a variety of books and short stories…" Spencer Reid could hear the chatter in his ear, but his mind was blocking it out as the words began to fall from his lips. He found himself talking about his love of old books from their language to their papery, inky scent, and the introduction of this love by his mother. She followed his words with her eyes never leaving his face.

"_Ah, guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Reid supposed to get her to talk?"_

"_He's probably just luring her in with a sense of security by talking about himself. He did say she was shy."_

_The sound of Morgan chuckling invaded the airwaves. "She could barely order her coffee."_

"_Guys, this name is going to take a little longer than I thought, but I should have it by the end of the night."_

"_Thanks Garcia. Prentiss, where are you?"_

"_The seat in the back left corner. I'm the one reading with a book in front of my face."_

"_Wicked__?"_

"_Yeah. It covers my whole face."_

"_Hotch?" Rossi's voice fizzled to life over the link from his place in the back room in front of the live feed security camera. "There's a camera positioned right behind her, and I can't help but wonder how this woman-even with the men drugged-managed to get those men far enough out to bury them. Even Reid could break this girl in half. "_

"_Could she be triggered into a psychotic break by week seven?"_

"_Maybe." _

"_Reid, focus on getting her to talk."_

"You repair old books?" Her eyes widened slightly as she took another sip of coffee.

"It's a nice hobby that takes no effort for me, and it makes other people happy." Twirling the dregs at the bottom of his cup with a slim brown straw, Reid stared at the sugar crystals stuck to the cup. "What do you do?"

She blinked. "I'm a translator."

"No, what do you do when you get home or one the weekends when you're not a work?" His smile faltered as she focused on a spot on the cup in her hands.

"I don't really do much. The translations I don't finish I take home. I suppose it's really just reading, but that ends quite quickly." Her fingers tapped against the side of her cup as she thought. "Dr. Brown used to take me with him to a veterinary clinic on the weekends to volunteer, but I haven't been back there since he died. He was very fond of rabbits, and he used to take the ones healing home when they were too crowded at the clinic."

"You don't want to go back?"

"I don't like animals, and I think they have a similar feeling towards me. They're much too messy and unpredictable." Reid nodded with a half smile on his lips.

"Animals don't like me either. My friends call it the 'Reid Effect'."

"_That's how she could've gotten the ketamine."_

It was silent at the table while Reid reached one arm across the table and tossed his cup into the trashcan directly in front of Morgan's table. Addy caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she tried to suppress the urge to talk. Spencer Reid stared at the red mark on her lip before he spoke.

"You have a sister?"

She nodded twice. "She's older than me. I always wanted to look like her. She's gorgeous. I used to call her Li when we were younger and I came home from school." It was only the second time he'd seen her smile. "I think I'm the only one that calls her that now, but I haven't seen her in years."

"Li?" Reid smiled, but Addy's voice reached his ears before he could speak

"Dr. Reid, why did you ask me out for coffee tonight?"

He pressed his lips together. "To talk to you." Her eyes were on the table, but he could see the confusion expressed through every other part of her body as she shifted in her chair. "It doesn't happen often?"

"No."

"You're life sounds boring enough to belong to anyone in the BAU." Head cocked to one side as she listened, Reid rephrased as he saw a confused wave cross her face. "We never really have time to go anywhere either."

"_Speak for yourself, Reid, but you just never come out with me."_

"I don't like crowds." One finger slid around the rim of her cup. "I usually stay at work until nine to try and finish up everything, and when I do finish I read. I'm in the process of learning Japanese." Her eyes met his and for a moment he counted in his head.

'…_One one-thousand, two two-thousand, three three-thousand…"_

She glanced away. It was then that Spencer Reid was sure of what he had wanted to tell the team earlier.

"_Well, I take it she doesn't have an alibi."_

Prentiss's voice broke into his mind, and he grinned at the woman across from him.

"You stay in that closet all night learning Japanese?"

"What closet?" For once, she kept her eyes staring into his for longer than three seconds. Her dark eyebrows came together, and she bit her bottom lip.

"Your office is about the size of an old janitorial closet. In fact, I think it used to be one."

"Oh." She nodded with her cup halfway to her mouth. "Yes, it did. My colleagues grew tired of my companionship and late office hours. Also, I find it very hard to concentrate in areas of noise."

It was in the complete silence of their table that Reid opened his mouth and began the gentle interrogation.

"Dr. Addy, when you meet my eyes do you count to three?" He didn't know if she was aware of the fact that her eyes widened and she blushed. "Please don't be embarrassed, I just want to know why?"

"If I make eye contact for less than three seconds people think I'm dismissing them or being to shy, and if I make eye contact for more than three seconds they think I'm being too aggressive so I try to maintain eye contact for exactly three seconds so that people don't become uncomfortable."

"It seems like a good idea." He grinned at her to try and bring her back around to her comfortable state. "Never mind that then, where did you go to school?" This time she smiled back at him.

"I went to a boarding school in New Hampshire from the age of seven until I was fourteen. I transferred to Macalester College in Minnesota after that. That's where Dr. Brown found me." Her eyes did leave Reid as she spoke, and he nodded to get her to continue. "I did an internship for the FBI the summer before my junior year, and after that Dr. Brown had me continue on so that I could join the FBI." Reid shifted in his seat slightly. "Are you uncomfortable, Dr. Reid? I didn't mean to talk to you for so long. If you have somewhere to be I wouldn't mind if you left. It would be quite understandable."

He shook his head while he laughed. "No." The rest of his words stayed in his mind. _'You just remind me of myself and Gideon.'_ Reid lifted his face to hers and smiled slightly when he noticed the look in her eyes as they darted towards the door-an expectancy of him leaving. "I was just wondering why your parents would send you to boarding school when you were only seven. Even when my mom realized I was going to skip all of the lower grades she kept me in public school."

It was as she spoke that Reid noticed the evenness of her voice when it should've been tight and on edge, and it was after she had finished that those listening in realized that her voice didn't match the words she was speaking.

"I didn't want to embarrass Li. Everyone knew her in the neighborhood because she used to do all the school and church plays and she danced, and I couldn't be associated with her. I'm relatively inept in social situations which I don't mind saying because it's very true. Li was gorgeous and she should never have had to deal with me. It was worth it with where she is today. She worked so hard, and I never wanted to ruin her chances at Julliard. It was all she ever wanted."

Reid heard Prentiss's whispered utter of, "Oh my god" as he stared across the table at Vivian Addy. Profile point five: unsub's need for attention (specifically from the obsession) driven by childhood experiences. Addy smiled, completely oblivious to Reid's knew found feelings of regret.

"I don't want to ruin the life she deserves."

-TBC-

Thank you for reading and please review.


	7. Sex, Rebirth, Death

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: So, now is about the time to start theorizing if you're so inclined to do that in fan fiction…

**Chapter Six**

There was silence over the table and in Reid's ears as Vivian Addy sipped the last few ounces of her drink. Reid pressed his lips together as he reached across the table for her cup.

"Thank you." She nodded at the arch of the cup as he tossed it into the trashcan, and he forced himself to smile. Her eyes stayed on a spot over her head as he tried to find a way to try and find the words to speak, but nothing came to him. "Dr. Reid, thank you for the coffee." With her small body she didn't need to push her chair from the table as she stood, and Reid missed the motion of her standing as he looked at his hands. "If it's possible, if you'd like to, could we meet again?"

"_Reid, we need to bring her in. She fits the profile."_

Spencer Reid swallowed as he looked up at her. "You're leaving?"

"It's ten at night, and I'm sure that you have to be into the office equally as early as I do." She ducked her head to the side. "I don't want to keep you."

The side of Reid's lips twitched upward into an awkward smile as he stood, and Hotch groaned at the painful memory of Reid's lopsided smile shared with Tobias in a small Georgia cabin.

"You weren't keeping me, but I think we'll see each other again soon."

"I don't understand." She didn't break eye contact until he smiled and forced her to look away with a slight smile on her face.

"Just answer one thing for me?"

She waited for him to continue until she didn't hear him speak. "Of course."

"Where were you last month..." he feigned uncertainty. "On the 22nd?" Her eyebrows came together in some form of confusion that he hadn't seen on her face before. "I swear I recognize you from this seminar I went to in Fredericksburg. It was that afternoon." She shook her head.

"No, it was a Sunday, right? I was at home." She shook her head again as he gestured for her to step in front of him towards the door. "I don't go out much. Last month I was learning Chinese so I was probably at home doing that. I use a series of computer versions for pronunciation and then just a dictionary so that I know the words by sight." She turned towards him with her back to the door.

"_Dave, go around and meet her at the door."_

"May I ask you a question, Dr. Reid?" He nodded. "Do you take the subway to work in the mornings?" He nodded again. "I saw you this morning. I recognize your purple scarf. It's quite an eye catching article of clothing."

Morgan groaned over the line. _"That's not a good thing."_

When she turned her eyes followed the line of buttons up to Rossi's face.

"Dr. Addy, I'm Special Agent Rossi, and I need you to come with me for some questions." He held out one hand, and she turned back to Reid.

"Dr. Reid…"

Morgan, Prentiss and Hotchner had taken his place, and her eyes widened.

"Oh." She played with her fingers as she turned. "Of course he didn't ask me out for coffee."

* * *

Reid caught Rossi before he went into the conference room holding Addy, and the team shared one knowing glance.

"You need to be careful with what you say to her."

"Reid, I know your new little girlfriend may not be the most stable woman in the world, but she's going to get interviewed as a person of interest and nothing less." Hotchner pressed his palm against his forehead when he heard Rossi's voice, but Reid's eyebrows came together in bewilderment instead of anger.

"I mean, you need to be careful with what you say to her so that you don't confuse her and get the wrong answer." He held out a series of papers to Rossi that he pulled from his bag. "She won't understand sarcasm or hypothetical situations." He eyed the older agent before him. "She's very detail oriented and literal."

Rossi raised one eyebrow as he scanned the paper. "Wouldn't this be in her file?"

"Not if she was never diagnosed because her parents sent her a way before a normal school system could spot it. It might be why they sent her away. It explains the awkwardness, the fact that she's easily distracted by outside noise, the inability to notice intonations in voice, and her fixation with certain topics." He almost smiled at a memory. "It's why she times her eye contact; if she didn't she wouldn't know when to look away because she just can't know it."

"Reid, what are you talking about?" Hotchner's eyes were fixed upon the youngest member of the room.

"I think she has Asperger Syndrome. It's an autism spectrum disorder characterized by difficulty in social interaction, but no delay in cognitive development-no demonstration of empathy, impair nonverbal behavior, the intense fascination with languages and linguistics, abnormal speech, and motor clumsiness. It all fits. It's why she speaks in only one tone of voice and why she doesn't know when I'm asking a question-she's misinterpreting the nuance in my voice."

Morgan's eyes darted to the woman seated at the round table. "You're saying that she has autism?"

"Yes, but not what you're thinking of, Morgan." Reid kept his eyes on Rossi. "Just be as literal as possible."

"Right."

* * *

Reid watched from the bullpen as Rossi failed to realize just how literal he needed to be with Vivian Addy. His eyes followed tapping of her fingers against the desk, the biting of her bottom lip and the arch of her eyebrows as she tried to answer the agent before her. Moving across the table, Reid's eyes followed the movement of Rossi's hands as he rubbed his face with his palm, shifted his legs and rolled his eyes. Reid let his head fall onto the desk.

"Reid, you think she's really got Asperger?" The muffled reply was barely recognizable, but Hotchner understood it to be a 'yes' by default. "With this lack of empathy wouldn't it make her more prone to violent crimes?"

"No." Reid pulled his head up from the desk. "It's not a lack of empathy, but a lack of showing empathy. There's no data supporting the idea that those with Asperger Syndrome are more prone to violent crimes." Reid frowned. "Hotch, that's the thing I don't understand. You think she goes into a rage during a psychotic break, but she would not do that."

"Why not?'

"She doesn't really express extreme emotions so a rage is hard to imagine. She doesn't easily display emotion. It's why she was so disconnected from talking about her childhood."

"It would explain why she drugged and buried them. It's an action that distances the person from physically touching or harming the person. There were traces of fibers from a tarp meaning that she dragged them without touching them."

"You're twisting what I say to fit a scenario, Hotch."

"You're twisting what you read to fit a scenario, Reid."Aaron Hotchner couldn't help but wonder why of all the women that Reid met that the young man identified with this one. "Reid, I know you like her, but you must realize that she fits this profile. How many times have we been wrong in the end?" No answer. "Spencer?"

"When I was younger they thought I had some signs of A.S., but I was never diagnosed with it."

Hotchner eyed the younger man before him and kneeled down at the edge of the desk. "Reid, look at me." Reid's fingers slid across the desk as he turned, and Hotchner gripped his shoulder."If it's not her I'll be the first to admit it, all right?" Reid nodded. "And you should probably take her out for coffee again, but wait until Rossi is finished. We're not arresting her until tonight unless we get proof. Understand?"

"I understand, Hotch."

"Good. Now take a break. I'll make sure Rossi doesn't confuse her too much."

* * *

He found himself on the sidewalk with his arms crossed, and his eyes towards the sky.

"Dr. Reid?"

A traffic light changed and cast a greenish hue across the street.

"Dr. Reid?"

Spencer Reid forced his head towards the voice and his eyes widened.

"Hey, Dr. Reid."

The young man before his eyes hugged his arms to his chest and stared out at the doctor through a shadow of dark, curled hair. Reid let his eyes pass over dark wool coat and green scarf covering the boy's body. The boy's face held an uncertain, regrettable look.

"Nathan?" A nod greeted Reid's words. "What are you doing here?"

"I sent you some emails. Um," he paused and smiled slightly. "The place where I'm staying is really nice, and my doctors let me out once a month. I, um, I wanted to thank you for saving me. It's better now. My main doctor, a Dr. McCarty, has me write down all of my dreams and stuff in a journal, and then we talk about it. The writing helps, and I've had less dreams since I went in."

"Ah, Nathan, that's great. I couldn't, you know…"

"Yeah."

Neither of them filled the silence until the light changed and cast a yellow then reddish glow about the area.

"Nathan, do your doctors know you're here this late?"

"Ah, yeah. That car circling is Dr. McCarty. He agreed to drive me up here so that I could thank you in person. It was the only time when he didn't have anything to do, but he's probably ready to leave. So, thank you for saving me and everything. I, ah, owe you." A quick smile graced his face before he reached out for the car to stop.

"Yeah, Nathan, don't worry about it. You were just really confused." For once Reid's mind couldn't work fast enough to create some sort of response to the situation. "If you need anything else just call me, and if I don't answer just leave a message. I'll call you back when the case is over."

"Yeah, thanks again-for everything."

It was after he had vanished into the car and driven away that Reid let out the breath he had been holding and turned away from the doorway of the building.

* * *

"I don't understand, Agent Rossi."

Dr. Vivian Addy's fingers were tapping at the bottom of the table top, and Dave Rossi could hear the steady staccato sound coming from that side of the table. Her eyes were focused on his as he laid out picture after picture upon the table. She let her eyes slide along the shots of different men with different faces, and the tips of her fingers continued their mantra on the bottom of the desk.

"Do you recognize any of these men?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I don't forget faces."

"All of these men were killed by someone of small stature using ketamine to drug them."

"You're assuming that I killed them."

"Yes."

"What?"

Rossi eyed the woman before him. "Come again?"

"What did you mean by 'yes'?"

He accepted Reid's Asperger theory as he answered Addy. "I was answering you."

"But I didn't ask a question. I was stating a fact. There's no other reason for you to question me as a person of interest unless you and your team have a profile that implies I am the murderer."

"You're correct. Almost everything in our profile points to you-small frame, socially awkward, meticulous, intelligent, the drugging suggest that the killer is female, and here you are."

"Am I being placed under arrest?"

"No."

"May I go home?"

"Only if you don't plan on going anywhere."

Addy's eyes met Rossi's, and she frowned. "I plan on going home. I usually wake up at six, and I find it hard to fall asleep so I try to get home before midnight."

He sighed as he spoke. "You can go Dr. Addy."

* * *

"That was weird."

"We have no physical evidence that it's her, but we can't just let her go."

"Relax Morgan, if we just wait and watch her we can get enough."

"Prentiss, we weren't all that sly when Rossi questioned her. She could just stop all together or long enough to throw us off."

Hotchner watched his team from the sidelines as Addy walked towards the elevator. "Prentiss, Morgan: go grab Rossi and see what you guys can come up with as to where she might find the victims. Have Garcia help you by running their cards against hers to see if they frequented the same places."

"Hey, Hotch, where's Reid?"

"I told him to take a break." He turned his back on the bullpen as Addy pressed the button for the elevator and waited, and Hotchner forced his body towards her. "Dr. Addy, do you know how we found you?"

She glanced at the man beside her. "You looked up my name in the directory and located my office number." There was no trace of humor in her voice, and Hotchner sighed.

"You were video as being at every single one of Dr. Reid's seminars." She nodded twice.

"Yes, I enjoy them very much. His studies and seminars on linguistics are fairly interesting." She turned to face him. "What does that have to do with the case you're working on currently?"

"All of the victims resemble Dr. Reid."

"No they don't." Hotchner was certain that she'd lost all thoughts about her rigid eye contact routine as she stared at him. "There are certain similarities, but they don't share the same facial features, and several of those men were too broad shouldered or short."

"You don't see the resemblance."

"I suppose if you weren't looking closely that the basic bone structure would be alike with the hair, but Dr. Reid possess a very unique and symmetrical facial structure. It would be hard to compare them all together"

The elevator dinged.

"Dr. Addy, are you upset with Dr. Reid?"

"Why would I be upset?"

"He talked to you under false pretenses and recorded your conversations suspecting you of murder."

She faced Hotchner from the elevator and kept one hand before the doors to keep them open. "It's simply his job, and I cannot be upset with him for doing that. It was rather silly of me to expect him to speak with me under anything but false pretenses." She glanced away from his eyes. "I'll be at work all day tomorrow, but I hope this is cleared up soon because I expect that I will receive some translations to finish. Good night, Agent Hotchner."

"Good night, Dr. Addy."

* * *

Spencer Reid did not sleep through the night. Instead, he gave up at trying to force his body to bed and just stared at the ceiling over his couch until the alarm in the other room signaled him to get ready for work. It was only when he got there with his coffee and purple scarf in hand to lay atop his desk that he caught the eyes of Morgan.

"What happened?"

"Addy ran. She didn't show up for work this morning."

**-TBC-**

Thank you for reading and please review.


	8. IMPOSTER

Title: Obsession  
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: This is another filler chapter/cliff hanger because I'm leaving for a family reunion to the land of no internet, and I didn't just want to not update. I'll update when I get back Monday night or Tuesday morning.

**Chapter Seven**

The entire conference room was quiet as Reid glanced around at Prentiss and Morgan. They're eyes were focused outside the door in the bullpen where the slight figure of Anderson was desperately trying to find a route that would take him away from Rossi and Hotch. His eyes darted from left to right, left to right and finally to the dark figure before him. He flinched.

"Anderson, explain to me how the woman you were watching managed to leave her apartment in the night without you seeing her?"

"I don't know sir."

Rossi watched on from his spot behind Anderson should the younger agent also attempt to flee.

"Anderson, let's assume she just hasn't left the building. What if she's leaving now?"

"I left Hutchinson there to do surveillance when you called." The silence could be sense through the walls of the building, and Morgan winced on behalf of Anderson. "Sir, we did take photos of everyone who entered and left the building. She never left through the front or back entrance."

Prentiss didn't turn away from the bullpen as she spoke. "Running doesn't fit the profile or Dr. Addy's personality. The unsub's cautious, and running makes you seem guilty. They wouldn't run because they wouldn't think that we could legally catch or convict them."

It was Morgan that responded, but he had taken his eyes away from the scene in the bullpen to stare at his younger friend whose eyes were staring into nothing. "She could still be in the apartment." He caught slightly flick of Hotchner's fingers out of the corner of his eyes. "Let's go."

"We're going to Addy's apartment." He'd turned from Anderson, but the unfortunate Anderson was trapped between Hotchner and Rossi. "Anderson, send Garcia those photos now."

And just like that he'd been dismissed.

Morgan almost laughed, and Prentiss grinned at the young agent all too aware of that feeling.

"Reid, do you think Addy would run?"

'_She had been awkward yet adjusted, but would she run away from a place where she was comfortable? She would be too out of place.'_

"Reid, did she seem like the kind of person who would run?"

'_She wouldn't leave the only place she feels comfortable.'_

"Hotch, this doesn't fit the profile."

'_Was it an act?'_

"Reid!"

"I'm sorry. I was thinking." His mind wandered back to what they must be discussing. "It could've all been an act." Hotchner shook his head, and Reid sighed inwardly in thanks.

"No. She either was playing us very well or she's still in there. Let's go find out."

Morgan placed one hand on the shoulder of Reid, and directed him to the elevator as they left. Reid raised his face upwards. "This makes no sense."

"Coming from you, man, that's a bad sign."

It was met by a worse sign as Morgan nudged at the slightly open door leading to Addy's apartment. The light wood and the plastic door number were at an angle to the wall, and Hotchner could see the beginning of a wall in the apartment. It was then that the members of the BAU did an odd side step and shuffle that placed Reid as the last to enter the apartment with Rossi in front of him. Hotchner cast the older agent on look, and Prentiss could see the words in the nonverbal exchange. _'Make sure to stop him if it gets bad.'_

Only then did Morgan enter the apartment.

They split up-Morgan into the kitchen to the left, Hotchner straight into the living area, and Prentiss past him towards the bathroom.

"Clear."

"Clear."

"Clear."

Reid's eyes were focused on the stacks of books blocking the way to the window, the small desk pressed into a corner, and the laptop sitting on the couch. Rossi glanced back and nodded at Reid.

"What's her favorite author?"

"Everyone." He pressed the tips of his fingers against the spine of The Divine Comedy.

Prentiss glanced from the spotless and lacking bathroom to the closed door across the small hall. "Guys, the bedroom door is shut." Morgan glanced up from the empty cabinet he was running his hand across. He stepped around the wide eyed Reid to press one hand against the door. Rossi came into step behind Morgan as Hotchner beckoned him, and Prentiss slid in front of Reid who'd taken on a pale, tense form of restless energy.

"Dr. Addy?" Silence. Hotchner was cut off mid sentence as his eyes darted down at the doorknob and the dark red handprint splattered across it. Morgan followed his eyes. "Morgan, go."

It was as the door opened and Morgan's under-the-breath curses that they diverted their eyes to the still man behind them. None of them had expected to actually shield him from whatever lay in the room, but it was then that Hotchner wished he were tall enough to at least save Reid from the initial shock of seeing it over their heads immediately.

Dr. Spencer Reid did not step further into the room, but his eyes were well adjusted to the dim light of the room and the odd, reddish hue it had acquired. The word was dark against the impossible pale flesh of her back, and strands of her dark hair cut the letters in half as he read them. Each letter curved and carved into the skin of her back between her shoulders, and the curling lines of the ends came together in an odd mockery of her own cursive writing. Her spine sliced the spiraling 'O' in half. His eyes never moved from Vivian Jane Addy's body, and he briefly wonder, _'how?'_

An antique letter opener lay next to her body, and Reid could see the spots of blood on its thin point out of the corner of his eyes. It had been the tool and her body the medium.

It had carved 'IMPOSTER' onto the flesh of her back.

**-TBC-**

Please review. I enjoy knowing what you think about this.


	9. Metal from Flesh and Flesh from Bone

Title: Obsession  
Rating: Mature Teenagers and above (description of crime scene and violence)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: I finally got the first book, and I'm a little confused-does Reid have a degree in Physics or Engineering? According to the first one it's Chemistry, Mathematics and Engineering. Either way, while typing this I'm listening to the same songs Reid listens to while thinking about the case in Jump Shot. I also have not seen any reviews for the last chapter since I'm in a car right now at six in the morning.

Also, I strongly suggest that everyone watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. I love Joss Whedon.

**Chapter Eight**

A small shadow of blood spread out from under her body reaching out towards the edges of the bed, and it was met at the head and foot of the sheets by two more dark blossoming stains seeping out from under her hands and feet. The tips of her fingers curled inward against her palms with streaks of red running across the skin back down to the tears in her wrist. Twisted around her wrists and forearms, the metal was dulled by the blood steadily seeping through the holes left by the sharpened barbs of the wire. Her feet and ankles shared the same metal wire as the hands with the bards curving around the delicate layer of skin over bone that protected the ankle. He watched a drop of blood leave a soft red trail on the sheet as it fell from her foot. Somewhere in his mind he could hear the curses coming from Morgan, but his ears and mind were no longer working together. A bit of blood at fallen onto a book at the floor near her bed, and Reid frowned.

The room reeked of copper.

His eyes passed over the rest of her untouched body, and came to rest again on the letter carved into her skin.

Imposter.

A fake, fraud, cheat, charlatan.

I top of the 'I' spanned the length of her left shoulder blade nestled into the curve of flesh where it winged out from her body. It curved to the left at the bottom, and his eyes moved on to the jagged 'm' with three distinct humps and the 'p' connected to it by one thin line of red. The half-cursive handwriting made Prentiss wince as she looked on, but Reid was perfectly still even as his mind realized that the curving writing would have required to retrace some lines for the sake of making the letter a clear, clean cut. The top right of the 'o' had the distinct markings of a retraced letter, and the's' following it was the curved 's' of longhand as was the 't' that came next. The 'e' was thing and looped while the final letter was pressed against the inner curve of the right shoulder blade. The tail of the 'r' doubled over the final letters to cross the't'.

Strands of her hair were curled around the slashed skin with the tips reddened by the blood, and Reid could make out the makings of a single braid that had slowly fallen away as she'd struggled leaving her hair to tease and bother the cuts in her flesh. Dark red but slowly losing color, the thin camisole covering her body was a pale white at the bottom where the blood had not yet reached. The thin black pants were untouched and free of blood save for the wet hem at the bottom. Her face was turned towards the back wall, but Reid could not have looked at her face had she been turned towards them.

Hotchner pressed one hand against her neck with two fingers gingerly angled under her jaw, but he did not look down at her body as he did so. Morgan kept his eyes on Reid whose body was completely still in the doorway, and the younger agent stared on unblinkingly. He did not see the downward turn of Hotchner's mouth or his frantic gesture at Rossi for a phone. It was only when Hotchner's hands began to unwind the dulled barbed wire from Addy's hands that Reid moved and spoke.

"What are you doing?" There was something accusatory in his tone that caught Hotchner's ear, and the older man let it pass.

"She has a pulse, Reid." It was when Reid pushed past Morgan and Prentiss that Hotchner took a step back from the body of Dr. Addy. "Free her feet."

Reid's fingers worked around the barbs of the wire as he slowly unwound it from her ankles using one arm to lift her legs to keep the wire from tangling around her body again. His right hand pulled the barbs out one by one working around the ankle until the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. The barbs were shorter than usual, and Reid reached up towards her neck. Sliding beneath her neck and front, Reid turned her onto her side with the other hand curling over her body and tilting up her head. The tips of her eye lashes made dark crescent against her face as her eye lids flutter, and she groaned.

As the tips of the barbs pulled away Reid could feel the twitch of muscle and the slow spread of the blood across his hands. The flesh along the edges of the wires was jagged and torn with the original wounds an inch higher on the leg than where the barbs were stuck now. Reid groaned. The pull of one bard had cut through the skin over the bone, and as he unwound the wire more the metal gave way to blood and the blood gave way to the jagged edges of skin barely covering the dented and damaged bone. Prentiss fled from the room to meet the paramedics as they entered and keep her eyes away from the red stained streak of white visible between Reid's fingers as he pulled flesh away from metal.

Spencer Reid handed over Vivian Addy to a blue-jacketed man and woman who pulled her from the bed and pressed a think bandage to the words across her back before laying her across a stretcher.

Hotchner gestured with one hand. "Morgan," his fingers flicked to Reid. "To the hospital." Morgan pulled Reid from the room, and sighed as his younger companion pulled a pair of glasses from a shelf in the living room and put them in his pocket.

Dave Rossi stared down at the red stained bed before him. Hotchner looked up as Prentiss came back into the room, and she noticed the slight darkening of his eyes.

"They were in the building or the coffee shop. Tell Garcia to find them." Prentiss nodded, and Rossi spoke.

"When Addy wakes up how do you want to question her?"

"Reid can't do it. Dave, you do it. You talked to her last night so she knows you however briefly or bitterly you spoke."

"What are you going to do?"

"Morgan can take care of Reid for now, but he might just completely shut us out again."

"Again?"

"Not now Dave, but I'll explain later. I need to go find somebody."

"I'll head towards the hospital." The two men left the copper scented room, and Emily Prentiss stared down at the bed.

"Garcia, I need you to call CSI and tell them to head to Dr Addy's apartment, and I'm going to be showing up in a minute-we're going over all the footage from the coffee shop and the building."

* * *

Morgan kept both eyes on Reid as they entered through the hospital doors a mere four minutes behind the stretcher baring Dr. Addy. Reid's eyes had stayed straight ahead on the car ride over as Morgan manipulated the black SUV through the tide of cars left in the wake of the ambulance. Pulling into the driveway leading up to the hospital, Morgan barely heard the words leave Reid's mouth.

His head was straight ahead with his eyes stuck on the entrance to the ER as Morgan put the car into park. The dark blond hair mixed with brown had fallen to the sides of his face, but he'd made no movement to brush it behind his ears. It was one of the first times that he'd seen the hands of the young Dr. Reid perfectly still and lying flat against his legs. The angle of his head directed his voice towards the windshield, and Morgan tilted his head to hear it.

"She trusted me."

Morgan half wished that it was Hotchner or even Rossi who would have to deal with this, but he was resigned to the fact that Reid needed an answer and the truth right now.

"Yeah, she did."

"She knows that I only talked to her to get information for the case because we thought she might be the unsub."

"Yeah."

"Someone carved the word 'imposter' into her back because they saw us talking to her and observing her, which started when we thought that I was the target of the unsub's obsession." Reid didn't wait for a response, but noticed the slight nod of Morgan's head. "I'm not the object of obsession. It doesn't make any sense. Unsubs create obsessions and fantasies around woman they view as unobtainable-usually of a higher social status or appearance. I'm not any of that. I've never been on a successful date. There's no reason why someone would attach to me."

"Reid, you know that no one knows exactly how stalker delusions start." There was silence as Morgan unbuckled his seatbelt.

"I really liked her." Morgan glanced up and sighed.

"I know, Reid. Come on; let's go see how she is."

* * *

Aaron Hotchner had left the small postcard in the glove box of his car for the last year, and now he fingered the thick card as he dialed the number on the back. The seven digits beneath the carefully written words 'Emergency Only' connect Hotchner to a phone that went straight to voice mail. He flipped the car over as the mechanical voice instructed him on how to leave a message, and Hotchner slipped the card back into the glove box.

"Jason, it's Hotch. We had something happen on a case, and I'm afraid Reid might lapse back. This isn't something I can just leave in a message. Call me back when you get this."

He'd barely set the phone down atop the dashboard and watched Rossi drive away when the phone rang.

"Aaron, what happened?" No 'hellos' or other salutations, but the quick, to the point way of an FBI agent when they know something has gone wrong.

"We had Reid lure out a possible unsub…" As Hotchner began talking a little voice in the back of his mind reminded him of how just how ridiculous the plan to lure out Dr. Addy sounded.

* * *

Garcia's peanut M&M's were scattered across her palm as she tried to keep them as far away from her babies as possible, and she cut each offending candy in half with her teeth. In times of crisis she needed chocolate and peanut crushing death. The files popping up across her screen filled her vision and stilled.

"I got you now…" She had reached out towards the down arrow button as her phone rang, and Garcia groaned. "Interrupting the Oracle of Quantico when she is hard at work is not a noble cause, Lady Prentiss."

"Garcia, I need you to call CSI and tell them to head to Dr Addy's apartment, and I'm going to be showing up in a minute-we're going over all the footage from the coffee shop and the building."

"Oh god, what happened?"

"Addy wasn't the unsub, and the real unsub found out about her. He didn't want her taking credit for his work, or he wants to be caught. We need all of that surveillance footage now, Garcia."

"Course, I got it." Garcia turned her back on the screen with the files, and opened two video files on two other screens. "They're up and running for when you get here. I'll run my recognition system to see who goes in and out of the building but doesn't live there."

"Thanks Garcia. I'm on my way."

"Hey Kitty Cat?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened?"

"The unsub carved the word 'imposter' into her back and tied her down with barbed wire. He's made contact with us now, and it means the unsub's watching us."

"What's with all the 'he's'?"

"No name, no gender now with this amount of violence, and since Addy's not the unsub we have nothing until she wakes up."

"I'll be here when you get here."

"Thanks."

* * *

Morgan eyed the nurses as they ran back and forth from room to room with no commotion coming from the room Addy had been wheeled into twenty hours ago. Reid's fingers were running up and down the arm of the chair as he tried to distract himself from the sterile surroundings, and Morgan nodded at the approaching form of Rossi.

"Any word?"

"She's going to hate me."

Rossi frowned and cocked his head at Reid. "That wasn't exactly what I meant." He glanced at Morgan.

"Nothing. She lost a lot of blood, and I saw them get some bags." Morgan darted his eyes at Reid. "This could be bad."

"Reid." The younger agent tilted his head up towards Rossi, and Rossi winced at the look in Reid's eyes. "I talked to her last night, and you talked to her a lot. She's a highly logical person. You were doing your job. You know that she'll reason this as just that."

"She shouldn't have to."

"And you can deal with that when it happens."

All three men turned their heads as a shorter woman in white appeared from the door to Addy's room. "Vivian Addy?"

"Yes!" Reid's eagerness pushed him from the chair, and Morgan winced as he cracked the back of his knee against the chair leg. "How is she?"

"Well, the main thing we're worried about is infection from the lacerations to her wrist, ankles and back, and she lost an astonishing amount of blood for a woman her size. We've hooked her up to antibiotic. The cuts were too thin for stitches and the placement of the cuts so close to the bone led us to use a new bandage-like stitch that holds the skin together with no actual stitching. We've wrapped them in bandages that will need to be changed every few hours these first few days. We've also found ketamine in her system which we're worried about. The dosage wouldn't affect most people, but due to her size if could be problematic. We've only been able to give her a very small dose of pain medication because of it." Reid blanched. "We've called the hospital psychiatrist, and he's on his way down."

"I need to talk to her."

"Well, she's awake, but she's not exactly lucid. She keeps repeating the same phrase over and over."

Rossi nodded. "She's involved in an ongoing investigation. I'll be quick."

"All right." Reid forced his body down as the doctor turned back to the two men left before her.

"She works with you?"

When Reid didn't answer Morgan took over. "We work for the FBI. Dr. Addy is a linguist."

"Ah, well, how well do you know her? She has no family contacts and we need her under supervision in a few days when we release her."

"It'll be taken care of."

"Is she currently being treated for any other illness?"

"Not that we're aware of."

"Thank you. I need to go. Nurses will be checking in on periodically. You can go in when you like, but she needs to sleep. When the psychiatrist gets here if she's still awake he may request her moved to a new ward." Reid nodded while Morgan thanked the doctor, but the woman stayed. "Do you know of any family or close friends?" Morgan shook his head, but Reid raised one hand and the doctor turned to him. "How long have you known her?"

"Not long."

"Nevermind. I have other patients, but if you need an update or anything worsens the nurses will be able to find me."

Derek Morgan glanced back at Reid who'd collapsed into the chair with his body doubled over in some attempt to vanish into the wall.

"Reid, you just got to wait until Rossi's done."

"What if she falls asleep?" He shook his head. "She won't want to talk to me."

"You don't know that man. For all you know Rossi could be about to walk out here and say she only wants to talk to you." Reid lifted his head towards the door, and the hall stilled and silenced as both men watched the unmoving door across from them. Morgan sighed.

That wasn't supposed to get his hopes up.

* * *

A crime scene tech snapped a photo of the bed side table, and glanced down at the papers scattered atop the wood. One small rectangular card of paper stuck out from under the lamp, and he snapped another photo. Pressing one finger against the lamp he uncovered the business card lying across the papers.

_Special Agent Dr. Spencer Reid  
Behavioral Analysis Unit F.B.I.  
Virginia_

* * *

Rossi took in the thin form bandaged and tucked beneath a layer of white blankets, and he winced. Her eyes rolled towards him and the lashes fluttered as she tried to focus on him.

"Dr. Addy?"

"Agent Rossi?" It took her more effort to whisper his name than it did to open her eyes and she felt the darkness closing in. "Why won't he stop me now? Why won't he stop me now? Why won't he stop me now? Why won't he stop me now? Male, young, educated, speech therapy. Why won't he stop me now…"

"Dr. Addy, what are you talking about?" She turned her face towards his, and he watched her try to focus her eyes again. "We have a set of your glasses outside. Would you like them?"

"He said, 'why won't he stop me now'?"

"Did you see him?"

Rossi barely caught the small left to right movement of her head. "Male, young, educated, speech therapy, Washington D.C., he wore latex gloves."

Rossi smiled. "Thank you Dr. Addy." He glanced at her closed eyes. No apologies came because he knew that in five minutes she would never want to hear the words 'I'm sorry' again. "Dr. Reid is outside, but he's not sure if you want to see him." She shook her head.

"Why is he outside?"

"He wanted to make sure you're all right."

"But you've already questioned me."

"He's just here to check on your health."

"I don't understand. Why is he worried about my health?" Her words were slurring together and leaving her lips slower now. Rossi shook his head.

"He's upset that someone hurt you because of him."

"It was his job, but going out for coffee was the job too so why is he here…?" Rossi could almost hear the words continuing in her mind, but not managing to escape from her mouth as she worked her brain around the logic of it. Her mind made jumps he would never understand. In her ketamine and medication addled mind the logic made leaps and bounds it would normally leave to assumptions that made no sense without further thought, but every time she tried to string the thoughts together she lost her way. _'He only spoke to me on business and not pleasure which means that as soon as my talents are of no more use then he doesn't require my time. The fact that I was a suspect holds no place because either way it would be a matter of work. He did his job talking to me which means he didn't really want to talk to me, which means he lied, which means that he could've lied elsewhere, and now that I've told Agent Rossi everything I'm of no use. It was his job, and I did my job, but somewhere something changed, but nothing changed. He shouldn't be out there. His job is over…'_

"I'll send him in."

Rossi left her staring at his back, and as he came out of the door Reid raised his head. Rossi patted the younger agent on the shoulder and pulled him from the chair.

"She wants to see you."

Reid missed the door knob the first time he tried to enter the room in his rush, and Morgan shook his head as he answered his cell phone.

"Hey Baby Girl, you got the stuff on the surveillance for us?"

"No, Prentiss is doing that with my babies right now. I don't know if this still matters but I found out who Dr. Addy is."

"Who?" Rossi glanced at Morgan.

"I remembered that she said she called her sister Li so I looked up woman with names related to that when I realized that she chose her new name because then they could be Li and Vi. It's weird, I know, but go with it. I did a bunch of background checks on these women, and I've got one possibility based on age and the documents I have."

"Garcia, just tell me her name."

"You can't tell Reid. It might upset him more since her parents seemed like grade-A asses." Silence prevailed over the phone line. "Her real name is Jane Anne Archer."

**-TBC-**

I typed this in the car, and then I found an Ethernet cable in the hotel. Yay! Just as a side note, I don't kill people. I wrote a Wicked fic for the sole purpose of keeping Nessa alive so she could be with Boq. Mind you, I ripped out her heart to do it, but she's alive damn it. Oh right, now her real name is out. This fic was a good excuse to watch seasons one and two again (not like an excuse is ever needed).


	10. Not Fast Enough

Title: Obsession  
Rating: Mature Teenagers and above (description of crime scene and violence)  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: I understand that I tend to be confusing so I tried to un-confuse this chapter. Hopefully it worked. Thanks for reading. The chapter after this will probably be all Reid and Addy talking if all goes well. This is short. I know. I'm sorry. The 12 hour car ride only led to badly edited images of Reid.

**Chapter Nine**

Jason Gideon had not been within five hundred miles of Quantico, Virginia for over a year, and, despite his love for people, his eyes never left the road before him as he drove towards the place he had once called home. Hotchner's voice has given enough away with the barely controlled emotion behind the words. Gideon had needed no urging to return because a year of self-induced isolation from his old companions and the steady freeness of traveling had left him to think about what he could say to them now that he was free from the darkness of their job. His feet and car had taken him from the woods of the north to the back roads of Arkansas and Georgia that offered up empty roads and trees bound by eye-catching wisteria, and the hours upon hours of concrete gave him hours upon hours to think of the darkness in his life, rib bones, and future roads to journey down. His foot had never given in to the temptation of ungodly speeds, but now it pressed against the floor as he passed a speed limit sign bearing the number sixty.

Now, on the empty streets of Tennessee, he glanced at the clock and sighed. His manner of leaving had been less that gallant, but he hoped that his return would be welcome. His mind and heart expected cold stares and questioning glances, but all of that would have to come second. Jason Gideon had brought Spencer Reid into the world of darkness and blood, and he would not allow it to get the upper hand over his prodigy.

* * *

David Rossi left Morgan in the hallway of the hospital as Reid stumbled through the door to Addy's room, and he worked his way around the streets back to the offices. By the time he stepped from the elevator into the bullpen of the BAU the floor was devoid of any people, and the only sign of life came from the steady tapping of a pen against wood coming from Aaron Hotchner's office. He knocked.

"Dave? How is she?"

"Pretty good considering what could've happened. She gave me some things on the guy that did it, and I think it's probably the same one who did the seven murders. Garcia was right, this guy must have been picking out guys that reminded him of Reid hoping that they could someone stop him, and when they failed he killed them. Apparently, the guy kept saying, "why won't he help me now' when he got to Addy."

"A man?" Something sparked in the back of Hotchner's mind, but he couldn't bring it to thought enough to make sense of it.

"She said it was a young, educated man who was in speech therapy, he wore latex gloves, and he was from Washington D.C. This must be the perk of having your victim be a linguist. She lost a lot of blood and there's always infection, but physically she should be fine except for some scarring. She reasoned out why Reid did what he did-kept asking me why he was there if he didn't need to get a statement. It's a little troubling, but she's fine. Reid was spot on when he said Asperger Syndrome. I just realized that she reminded me of this kid from my high school. Brilliant, but this kid-"

"Dave, I know the attacker."The room stilled. "From a case or from home, but I know that description, and it's just at the back of my mind."

"You can't think of the name?"

"No, just that phrase sounds like someone. Give me the profile of the case with these new revelations added in to it. It'll come to me." Dave nodded and began.

"The unsub is small since he uses ketamine. He doesn't want to get his hands dirty, and he wants to keep himself away from the body to leave a lack of physical evidence. He's intelligent and thinks out the murders from distance to placement of the graves. He probably has some quality that allows for him to get close to the victims for seven weeks that isn't openly threatening. If he's young it could be naivety or sincerity, but when they can no longer live up to his delusion about them being Reid and able to help them, he kills them. He's murdering them as stand-ins for Dr. Reid who he thinks could help him since Reid might have helped him in the past."

It was a voice from the doorway that spoke up first. "Nathan Harris. He came to Reid having dreams about killing prostitutes, and before he went to a hospital he tried to kill himself because he thought it was the only way to save his future victims. Before he slashed his wrist in a hotel he laid Reid's business card on a table. Reid saved his life."

Hotchner pressed one hand against his face. "Nathan Harris…That was the case in D.C. where we had another prostitute killer." He needed sleep.

"Yeah, and Harris was released a year ago when he turned eighteen. His mother took him out, and I bet that's where we can find him. Apparently, they had been letting him out on little field trips where he could go where he wanted and he just had to report back by the check-in time. Security was loose since he was there on his own. It would make since with the 'why won't he help me now' and the drugging. Nathan was intelligent, and he wasn't the largest kid. However, he could easily drug some guy and know how to bury him without touching him. He was pretty reserved when we brought him up here."

The two men met Prentiss's words with silence until Hotchner glanced at Rossi.

"Prentiss, bring Rossi up to speed on the Harris case, and then get back to me. I'm waiting on a phone call. If Harris is the guy then we need to know the how and the why with even more detail and certainty. No mistakes this time."

Hotchner left them standing in his office as he pushed himself up from his desk and walked through the bullpen towards the conference room. Rossi glanced at Prentiss.

"Does the name Lila Archer mean anything to you?"

"Like the actress? Not really. Why?"

"Morgan was talking to Garcia about her at the hospital."

A thump sounded from outside the office, and the two glanced towards the door. Hotchner gestured at Rossi from the doorway. "Rossi, how did Reid look at the hospital?"

"He's blaming himself even though it wasn't his fault. Morgan's trying to calm him down, but I think he'll feel better once he's had a talk with Addy."

"Right. As soon as Morgan comes in with Reid find me." They nodded, and Hotchner turned back towards the conference room. He pressed one hand to his face.

'_I should never have put Reid in that position. What was I thinking?'_

* * *

Fingers tightened to the point of white knuckles around the steering wheel, Jason Gideon pulled the car around a tight corner and did not blink as he felt the momentum begin to pull the car towards the guard rail. The signs flying past his car described the food in the area and the fact that the next exit would take him to Big Stone Gap. The rarely used navigator in his car gave him an estimated time of seven hours to Quantico, and Gideon forced the gas pedal down into the floor.

Another sign passed, and he found himself in Wise, Virginia. Not fast enough…

**-TBC-**

Right, thanks for reading and please review.


	11. Of IVs and Chocolate

Title: Obsession  
Rating: Teens  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not accustomed to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not accustomed to using that attention to achieve such an end.  
Author's Note: I'm home and getting ready to leave for college, but for the last 48 I've had no internet due to the server somewhere being down so I apologize for the lack of updates. I'm going to try and post this at the library if I can.

**Chapter Ten**

The steady drip of the IV was the only sound Spencer Reid could hear when he shut the door, and his eyes followed the bag down the line to the heavily bandaged hand barely visible beneath the white blanket covering Vivian Addy. He shuddered. Her body was curled to the side with her back to the window, and Reid had to keep his eyes focused on her face as he caught sight of the bandages wound around her back. Her eyes were closed and still beneath the lids. Reid reached out with one hand and pressed his palm against the top of her IV free hand.

"Dr. Reid?" One eye was barely open when Reid glanced down at her face, and kneeled onto floor so that his eyes were even with her own. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to make sure that you were okay." The fingers on the hand covering hers traced the line of the white bandages around her wrist. She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them with her eyes unfocused, but staring at him.

"Thank you, but I'm fine." Reid shook his head.

"Our investigation almost got you killed-"

"It was only your job." She closed her eyes as he opened his mouth. "You had reason to suspect me, and an investigation was necessary. It would've been impossible to foresee what would happen to me were I not the actual the murderer you were looking for during your investigation." She turned her face into the pillows and rubbed the tip of her nose against the cloth. He watched her fingertips twitch.

"Does your nose itch?" When she nodded he pulled his hand from her hand and touched her nose with his thumb.

"Thank you." She had been whispering before, but now she did it with her eyes closed. "I feel like I'm swimming whenever I try to move." Her eye lids fluttered as she tried to glance at him. "When I try to remember things it's all fuzzy around the edges and…" She shook her head into the pillow. "I can't think."

"It's probably the pain medication." Reid kept his eyes down while he rolled his lips together trying to force the words in his mind onto his tongue. "I really did enjoy having coffee with you. I've never told anyone about collecting books, and it was nice to talk about linguistics. I really did enjoy it. I kept talking even when I didn't have to. It wasn't just for my job." He raised his eyes to her face. "And you're asleep." Reid straightened the blanket across her side and pressed his palm against the top of her hand curling his fingers around hers. He used one foot to pull a chair closer to the bed, and, as he kneeled on the chair, Reid rested his chin against the bed staring at her closed eyes. "At least I can think of what to say now." His mouth curled upwards. "Don't know how to apologize for causing a man to carve into your back, but…" He couldn't think about that. "They don't ever talk to me about books or linguistics or anything. It was nice to talk about it for once. Whenever I try they just ignore me or walk away without saying anything, and I know I'm annoying, but it's not like I ever have anyone else to talk to. We don't have time off, and no one else works in our office." He ran his thumb across the back of her hand and forced his mind not to remember the bits and pieces of blood flecked wire that had been wound around her wrist an hour before now.

It didn't work.

His fingers tightened around hers, and he turned his head into the bed trying to block out the images of barbed wire and bloody writing. "I'm sorry."

Vivian Addy began to move her lips in response, but no sound fell from her lips. Reid never looked up.

--

Stretched out across one of the chairs in the hall, Morgan tried to pull up the image of Lila Archer in his mind side-by-side with a picture of Vivian Addy. He groaned. The ears slightly pointed and the jaw lines the same made him run one hand across his face. Any other similarities passed him by as he tried to figure out how the voluptuous figure of Lila could be related to the willowy, waif-like figure of Vivian. The doctor's face was similar, but the cheek bones were more defined, and the eyes more almond shaped. The words of Addy drifted through his mind, _"I didn't want to embarrass Li. Everyone knew her in the neighborhood because she used to do all the school and church plays and she danced, and I couldn't be associated with her. I'm relatively inept in social situations which I don't mind saying because it's very true. Li was gorgeous and she should never have had to deal with me. It was worth it with where she is today. She worked so hard, and I never wanted to ruin her chances at Julliard. It was all she ever wanted."_

"Damn." Morgan pressed his phone against his ear. "Garcia, this is all just too damn weird. How does Reid always end up in the middle of this stuff?"

"I have no idea my handsome hero, but it's getting weirder. Someone left Reid's business card on the nightstand by Addy's bed."

"Reid never gave her a card."

"Yeah, but guess who did about a year ago. Does the name Nathan Harris ring a bell?"

"You can't be serious, Garcia. He's been institutionalized since Reid saved him."

"Yeah, but it makes sense. Apparently, the guy that got to Addy was asking why Reid couldn't save him now."

Morgan let his head fall back against the wall. "This kid is a magnet for the freaks."

"Mmm…How is my genius?"

"He's in with Addy now." Morgan shifted the phone so that it could rest against his head without the use of his hands. "He's blaming himself. Hell, the kid should blame us more than himself. He didn't like the idea to begin with."

"The Oracle of Quantico foresees a long night of drinks in the next week when Harris is safely in jail. I think my place can hold seven people."

"This is going to need a lot more than alcohol to fix it."

"Silly profiler, there will be chocolate." Garcia struck the enter key. "Aha! I have to go, but trust me-I would not assemble everyone until some serious chitchat has gone down."

"All right, see you later baby girl." Morgan hung up just as the sound of footsteps reached his ears, and he glanced down the hallway at the small man in white eyeing the door to Addy's room. Morgan's sentiments of the night as a whole were echoed again.

"Damn."

--

Reid had fallen asleep when he heard the door open. His eyes jerked when the door shut, and he found himself staring at the underside of a man's chin. Vivian Addy didn't more in her sleep as Reid stood up.

"I'm sorry, sir, but if she's asleep I need you to leave. Visiting hours have been over for a while."

"Oh." Reid glanced down at Addy's open hand. "Sure." He didn't quite remember walking out the doors, but he did remember Morgan using one hand on his shoulder to steer him towards the car. His eyes stayed on the passing line of lights as Morgan tried to maneuver the streets between 

the hospital and Quantico while darting his eyes from the road to Reid. The younger man let his head fall against the window.

"Hey Morgan?"

"Yeah?"

"She rationalized the attack-that it was only a part of our jobs."

"Technically it is." Morgan shook his head as he spoke. "I'm guessing it's how she said it that bothered you."

"She wasn't angry, she didn't blame anyone, and she just dismissed it as a part of everyday life." Reid let his head fall against the window as the car jumped. "She should be angry." The car jerked at Morgan swerved trying to avoid the sign he'd missed seeing as his eyes had darted to Reid. "She should hate me. Elle hated me."

It was in that moment of semi darkness as Morgan parked the car that the older agent couldn't hold back his laughter. Turning his head slowly, Reid frowned.

"Sometimes you surprise me Reid." Morgan turned Reid's face towards his own with his left hand, and held his eyes. "If anything, you were Elle's favorite."

"If I hadn't told me mom all of that stuff-"

"And if I hadn't taken Elle on vacation. Now, Reid, it wasn't your fault then, and now it's not your fault. If Addy's angry she'll be angry, and if she's not then she's not, but do not sell yourself out because everyone on the team bears responsibility for this-you least of all. It wasn't your idea man." Morgan shoved Reid towards the door. "Now, Garcia is probably at the top of that elevator waiting for you with a giant thing of hot chocolate and some love."

Reid managed to push the door open and leave the car before Morgan through an arm around his shoulders and herded him into the building. "I'm not really in the mood for hot chocolate."

"Yeah, too bad Reid, Garcia is." Morgan pulled Reid into a tighter hug. "You can go see her in the morning. It'll be fine. Now, let's get up there before Emily drinks all of your chocolate."

**-TBC-**

Short, but hopefully I'll be less busy soon.


	12. Tell Me Everything

Title: Obsession  
Rating: Teen-ish  
Disclaimer: If only…I don't own them at all.  
Author's Note: I knew I'd update eventually, and because it took so long this will be a longer chapter. I've finally settled into college and started classes so this should come faster now. I'm sorry it took so long.

Scratch that. Short chapter, but it's an update.

**Chapter Eleven**

Garcia was waiting with dark chocolate in hand as the elevator doors opened upon the BAU, and Reid found himself being dragged across the halls as Morgan watched from the elevator. It was Prentiss who walked towards him first with Rossi not far behind. Rossi stayed back as Prentiss tapped her foot against the floor to draw Morgan's eyes away from Reid's retreating back.

"Please tell me that something has happened with this case while I was on damage control duty."

"We know who the unsub is."

"Emily, you have made my day."

"It's Nathan Harris." Morgan stopped.

"Nathan Harris? Locked away a year ago Nathan Harris?"

"The one and only. He was released to his mother when he turned eighteen. It fits-the obsession and anger directed towards Reid."

Morgan followed Prentiss across the bullpen and dropped his keys on top of a stack of files left untouched since the case had started. "What about Addy? Why did he do that?"

It was then that Rossi spoke. "I think it's because Reid turned his attention to her instead of focusing on the case. In Harris's eyes that would've been tantamount to betrayal. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the sources of this-besides the obsession and other men-was knowing that it was Reid who would get this case."

"In Nathan's eyes Reid abandoned him." Morgan glanced from Rossi to Prentiss as the woman spoke. He groaned.

"We're never letting the kid out of the office again-first Elle, then Georgia, Harris, Gideon, Texas, and now this. He gets into more trouble than all of us combined." He sighed. "A lot of it seems to happen in Texas." Prentiss and Rossi shifted uncomfortably at the memories Morgan had that they did not.

"He does seem to be a magnet for trouble," muttered the older agent.

"He was close to Elle?" Prentiss spoke, ever eager for information about the agent she had replaced.

"Yeah, I think Reid thought of her as his older, protective sister. He would've done a lot for her-he did do a lot for her. Reid nearly got his ass shot during a hostage situation Elle was in…"

The three agents stared off at different memories playing across their eyes during the silence that followed Morgan's words.

--

Garcia had one hand around Reid's left hand while she played with the cup of dark hot chocolate in her other hand. Reid stared into his cup.

"Tell me about her."

"What?"

Garcia pulled the cup from his hands, pressed a hand against his cheek, and forced his eyes down towards her own line of sight. "Tell me about Dr. Addy." The first words that left his mouth caught her by surprise, and she nodded slightly to encourage him to talk further.

"I think I could fit my hands all the way around her waist."

From outside the door, Hotchner ducked his head, and his lips tilted upwards.

"Is it weird that when we were in her office and we'd only just met-when we still suspected her of murdering men that looked like me-that I wanted to brush a strand of hair behind her ear? It had fallen from the clip she had used." Garcia shook her head.

"Hey genius, remember what I say-everything happens for a reason." Reid shook his head.

"Not for me." He swirled the chocolate. "Everything just happens."

--

It was Hotchner who pulled the three agents from their memories, and Morgan spoke up before any request came.

"I think he'll be fine if Addy is fine."

Hotchner nodded. "I'm going to make sure that we do not have a repeat of anything that has happened in the past." It was Prentiss that nodded while Morgan's eyes darkened. "I heard that we had Dr. Addy's real name?"

Prentiss bit her bottom lip. "The name really doesn't mean anything. It's rather high profile, but…"

"The name Prentiss?

"Hotch, they weren't here for it. Addy is Lila Archer's sister-Jane Archer." Morgan leaned back against his chair. "This will send Reid into a nose dive."

"Derek, this is Lila Archer we're talking about. She lives in LA doing TV shows. This of all things should be the least aggressive thing on Reid's mind right now."

"It will be. We're not telling him." Three sets of eyes focused on Hotchner. "Morgan, fill Prentiss and Rossi in on the Archer case. I have to be somewhere." They all watched him leave until Rossi spoke up.

"We are talking about the actress, aren't we? What could she have to do with Reid?"

--

Blowing out small spirals of condensation into the air, Aaron Hotchner waited before the doors of the building beneath a hundred feet of concrete in the middle of a no parking zone, and the only other sign of life was three feet away growing from the corner of a parking spot spotted with moisture. The parking spots around him were scattered with black cars and SUVs while one convertible sat idly at the end of a row of Explorers. He glanced at his watch. Somewhere below him the wheels of a car spun against the concrete.

Jason Gideon had barely left the car before he'd pulled Hotchner towards the building with only three words.

"Tell me everything."

-TBC-

So, I wanted to post soon, but I can't get it all down so this is just here to hopefully tide you over (if anyone still reads this since I don't update for millennia). I'm sorry. Review and tell me things?


	13. He Just Knew

Title: Obsession  
Rating: Teen-ish  
Disclaimer: If only…I don't own them at all.  
Author's Note: I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good when I'm not updating (lies-I'm a bookworm). My goal is this chapter up before Saturday (which is the school sanctioned foam party (how much awesome can we fit into my school?). I will succeed.

**Chapter Twelve**

"No one ever listened to her. They just stuck her in some closet so that they didn't have to deal with her, and then they just used her mind every day without helping her or trying to talk to her. Garcia, her parents abandoned her. What kind of parents change their child's name and send them off to boarding school? I had Gideon." Spencer Reid pressed his hands around the mug. "At least he found me, and then I was on the BAU." Garcia pressed her fingers to her lips and kissed her hand. Reid smiled at the familiar gesture as she pushed his head back slightly with her once –removed kiss.

"We're family, Spencer. Family doesn't use each other." Reid smiled.

"You're all more my family than anyone else." Reid missed the small glint in Garcia's eyes as he turned away and glanced at the monitors. She pressed her hand over his and smiled.

"And never forget it." Reid glanced up once and smiled back. "She'll be fine."

"She's in a hospital scarred for life because of me." Garcia didn't open her mouth but pushed slid her mouse over on one screen, and Reid smiled as the security cameras from the hospital were pulled up on the screen. Reid stared at closed door to Addy's room while Garcia ruffled his hair.

"Be her knight in shiny armor and watch over her while she sleeps." Reid smiled again.

"Thank you, Garcia."

* * *

"Reid-Spencer Reid-and Lila Archer had a fling?" Prentiss had one eyebrow raised as Morgan chuckled at her wording, and she glanced at Rossi. "Dr. Spencer Reid?" Rossi smirked.

"I wouldn't call it a fling." Morgan glanced at Garcia as she walked towards them and nodded. "Reid met her at some art show while in L.A. with Gideon for a convention, and then we got this case involving her-some girl was stalking her and killing off people for her. Anyways, Reid goes with her as protection and Lila was already half interested, but now he's her hero. Elle and I were scouting out this paparazzo, and we see him snapping pictures of Reid and Lila by the pool-kissing. Reid didn't know what was going on. He looked like a drowned rat." Prentiss was staring at Morgan with her eyes wide while Rossi laughed to himself shaking his head. "She jumped him. Reid was confused for the next week." Garcia grinned at the story before opening her mouth to remind them why the actress had ever come up in conversation involving Reid.

"It's hard to notice the family resemblance, isn't it?" Their smiles faded. "I'm running checks on Nathan's mother's cards and accounts-I'll know if she's been helping him. As for location, that's up to you guys unless I find something in the cards."Prentiss nodded.

"I wish we could get Reid to run one of his Jeopardy maps." Prentiss's mind flashed back to the image of Reid's hands sliding one after another down the length of a sheet of paper, and how those three lines gave them enough about an unsub to lead to a location. Morgan nodded.

"Our genius is watching the security cameras at the hospital to keep an eye on Addy." Prentiss smiled at the computer tech half heartedly as she pushed her eyes to the file she'd found while rustling reports around in her desk.

"Nathan's obsessed with Reid." Morgan raised one eyebrow at his colleague. "He wants help from Reid like he did before, but now, since Reid couldn't help him then and he knows Reid can't help him now, he's directed his inner anger at Reid." It was Rossi that nodded as Morgan's eyes drifted across the empty bullpen. "He went after Addy when Reid directed his helping attention to her." Garcia glanced back in the direction of her office. "He needs the real Reid." The eyes of the agents had drifted away from any line of sight in reality long ago, and the four were focused on a hundred fold possibilities that would get them nowhere. None noticed the 'ding' of the elevator. Hotchner let his eyes wander over his agents as he followed Jason Gideon's rushed steps through the BAU. Gideon's eyes glanced over the room once as he came even with the four agents, and Garcia's eyes widened when she noticed him. She squeaked.

"He's in Reid's apartment waiting for him to get home. Ask why later. Where's Spencer?"

There was silence before Garcia pointed over her shoulder towards her office, and the silence went on as they all stared after the man racing to Reid. Morgan turned to Hotchner.

"What the hell, Hotch?" His eyes darkened beyond their usual black. "I thought the point was to make sure Reid was all right-not kill him." Prentiss pursed her lips while Rossi simply raised his eyebrows and glanced towards his friend.

"I did what I thought would be best for Reid and the team."

"It nearly killed him when Gideon left!" Prentiss opened her mouth once, shut it, and thought better of speaking then.

"Morgan, focus on finding Nathan Harris."

Rossi nodded. "Jason said Reid's apartment?" Prentiss nodded.

"It would make sense."

"Gideon, Hotch?"

"Gideon brought Reid to the FBI and oversaw all of his training. If Reid is considering quitting the BAU again I need Gideon time to pull him back. The first time none of us could do it." No one spoke while Morgan struggled to find something to say.

"The first time?"

"When he missed the plane in New Orleans." He nodded.

Prentiss turned towards Rossi. "He's waiting for Reid on neutral ground because Reid would have to go home at some point, and we wouldn't expect him there if we didn't know about it."

Rossi nodded. "We need to assemble."

"Reid never told me." Hotchner looked off after Gideon and nodded.

"He didn't tell anyone, Morgan. Gideon just knew."

* * *

"Thank you for the letter." Reid had known it was Gideon when the door had shut, but no voice had come. "It took me awhile-Prentiss helped-to read it correctly." Reid didn't take his eyes off of the still and locked door to Jane Addy's room. "What are you doing here?" Gideon stayed against the door, and was not unnerved by Reid's refusal to look at him when he remembered back to the days after Georgia and Reid's indifference then. He pressed his palm against Reid's shoulder. "I know who it is. It took me awhile, but I realized it while I was sitting here. There were too many coincidences."

"I told you." He smiled. "We'd catch him together."

Gideon followed the line of nurses that would file passed the door on the screen every few minutes as Reid sat there in silence. His fingers reached out for the screen and, as the motion the detector lights in the hallway on the screen flickered out, he pressed his fingers against the image of her door. Gideon tightened his grip on Reid's shoulder. It was as a nurse triggered the lights and caused Reid to pull his fingers back that he spoke.

"Thank you." Reid finally turned towards his mentor from a year ago, and his mind automatically took in the graying hair, but clearer eyes. "I don't really want to catch him though. I trust them to do it." Gideon nodded. "I don't know if I could do it." Gideon nodded again.

"Guilt is a common emotion for all of us." Reid shook his head and blinked at the man that he had once believed knew everything.

"I'm not guilty." Reid glanced back at the locked door on the screen. "I've never wanted to hurt someone so much." Even the months of a Dilaudid induced hazed had not triggered such anger in the younger man. "I don't know what I would do to him."

* * *

"We need to set up the team to go to Reid's apartment. Someone needs his key." Morgan shook his head.

"I've got a copy Hotch." Hotchner nodded and Morgan turned towards a drawer in his desk. "We go in, get Harris, and this kid will want to confess. It'll be easy."

"It's just us and backup." Morgan raised his hands while Prentiss nodded.

"Reid needs no part in this." They all nodded, and Garcia sat down in Morgan's car as the talk went on further into the realm of legal breaking-and-entering. Rossi rubbed his hands together.

"Let's go."

"What about Reid?" Hotchner nodded at the technical analyst.

"Tell Reid and Gideon what's going on, and make sure everything is all right." She nodded. "And make sure they're at the hospital when visiting hours start."

It was when they were in the elevator that Morgan turned to Hotch with a slightly smile. "Hotch, you might want to look away when I arrest Nathan Harris." Hotchner nodded, but turned to Prentiss when she snorted. A strand of her hair fell in front of her face, and Hotchner grinned as she pushed the hair behind her ear and spoke.

"When _you_ arrest him?"

-TBC-


	14. Coffee

Title: Obsession  
Rating: Teen  
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.  
Author's Note: This is it. This is the final chapter. There might be an epilogue, but I enjoy leaving things with just the summing up of the conflict and the possibility for happiness. I've considered a sequel, but I have other story ideas too. So, your two cents is appreciated. Thank you for reading this and reviewing. Here's the final chapter!

**Chapter 13**

Jason Gideon slid one chair across the floor as Reid continued to watch the screen before him. The young agent had his fingers splayed out across the keyboard while Gideon let go of his shoulder and sat down next to him. Reid pressed his lips against each other.

"Everyone always considers the survivors lucky." Gideon said nothing and Reid continued. "I pulled the wire from the ankles and wrist. I could see the bone." His fingers tapped one key, and he watched the screen flicker and twitch to a different angle from across the hall of the room. "I could see his skull on the wall after the shotgun blast—pits and pieces scattered across the wall and the floor and her hair." Gideon was lost having no recollection of cases after his time, but the basic, underlying meaning caught his attention. "I have an IQ of 187, I can read twenty thousand words per minute, and I have an eidetic memory. I can never forget what I see. I see every image over and over. Every blank wall is flecked with red. How am I supposed to look at her when every time my mind will just put the image of blood and wire over her?" Reid hit the key again and the original screen came back. "When did it seem like a good idea to show an eighteen year old boy, with an eidetic memory, pictures of the dead day after day? Ethan got out, but I don't think I could. I don't think I want to. I can't forget any of those pictures." Gideon gripped Reid's shoulder. "I want to talk to her, but can't look at her."

"I think talking to her is a good idea."

"It won't make the images go away."

"Not quickly, not forever, but it will help. It will be a good distraction."

"It will be on her back forever. She doesn't feel anything. She has rationalized it. No one can do; no should be able to do that." The pause went on in silence, and Reid groaned. "No one ever talks to her."

"Aaron told me about her."

"She based her thesis on my research." Gideon slid his hand from Reid's shoulder to up against his cheek, and his once student finally met his eyes.

"You just need to make some new memories, and enough of them that, when you look at her, the new memories are what come to your mind first." Spencer Reid smiled slightly and nodded.

"That's a short answer to all of my questions."

"I don't think you really want those answers." Neither moved until Gideon pushed Reid's hair back from his face and, and Gideon stood. "You need to cut your hair. Where's the chess board?" Reid smiled and walked with him to the door. Gideon pulled him back.

"You were always meant for the BAU. We would've found you no matter what, and the BAU will always be there for you."

"Gideon, even after everything, I don't think that the BAU finding me was a bad thing."

* * *

They found him sitting at a kitchen table scattered with old case files and Star Trek DVDs covered in coffee mugs. He was taller, he was thinner, and he was quiet as they approached. Pale fingers wrapped around a cup of coffee that had cooled hours ago, Nathan Harris kept his eyes focused on the cup across from him that he had filled with coffee the same number of hours ago. A few hundred empty sugar packets covered the floor at his feet. Nathan raised his eyes to Morgan's gun.

"Dr. Reid isn't coming, is he?"

* * *

"Why Jason?" Aaron Hotchner tore his eyes from the blue lights swirling over the head of Nathan Harris, and glanced at Rossi.

"Jason was Reid's mentor. He handpicked Reid during college and oversaw all of his FBI training." Rossi nodded his companion onwards. "Reid never talks much about his family, but he never mentions his father."

"And Jason treated Reid like a son."

"In more ways than one." Emily Prentiss had slid in behind Rossi as Hotchner had spoken, and he glanced once at her before moving aside to let her into the conversation. "Reid's father left a letter after he left Reid and his mother just like Gideon left to Reid when he left the BAU." The three were silent as Morgan walked over with his knuckled turned in against his shirt.

"He's already confessed. Are we done here?" Hotchner nodded and led the team to the SUV.

"We are." Rossi crossed in front, and Morgan did away with any niceties while crawling across the back seat. Hotchner held the door as Prentiss got into the back seat behind the driver."Reid isn't."



* * *

There were five packets of sugar dissolving in Reid's cup of coffee as he struggled to find his balance walking down the hall of the hospital the next day. The other cup held only half a spoonful of creamer. Gideon had taken his bag into the waiting room, but Reid's balanced was still off as he dodged a racing nurse to open the door with his elbows. She didn't frown as he entered, but she bit her bottom lip and cocked her head to the left. Reid held out one cup of coffee to her and smiled.

"Dr. Addy, I was wondering if you might like to discuss the tendency of those accused or suspected of violent crimes to use the iussive subjunctive over the more commonly used optative subjunctive over some coffee?"

-END-


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